,,essays ,,sthetical by ,,george ,h4 ,,calvert #ahge ,,contents4 ,i4 ,,the ,,beautiful ,,ii4 ,,what ,,is ,,poetry8 ,,iii4 ,,style ,,iv4 ,,dante ,,and ,,his ,,latest ,,translators ,v4 ,,sainte-,,beuve1 ,,the ,,critic ,,vi4 ,,thomas ,,carlyle ,,vii4 ,,errata ,,viii4 ,,national ,,drama ,,ix4 ,,usefulness ,,of ,,art ,,essays ,,sthetical4 ,i4 ,,the ,,beautiful4 ,the ,beautiful is one of the immortal themes4 ,it cannot die2 it grows not old4 ,on the same day with the sun was beauty born1 and its life runs parallel with the path of that great beautifier4 ,as a subject for exposition1 it is at once easy and difficult3 easy1 from the affluence of its resources2 difficult1 from the exactions which its own spirit makes in the use of them4 ,beauty--what is it8 ,to answer this question were to solve more than one problem4 ,shall we attempt what has been so often attempted and never fully achieved8 ,such attempts are profitable4 ,what though we reach not the very heart of the mystery1 we may get near enough to hearken to the throb of its power1 and our minds will be nerved by the approximation4 ,to him who has the gift to feel its presence1 nature teems with beauty4 ,whithersoever the senses reach1 whenever emotion kindles1 wherever the mind seeks food for its finer appetites1 there is beauty4 ,it expects us at the dawn2 it is about us1 an hourly neighbor1 through the day2 at night it looks down on us from star-peopled immensities4 ,glittering on green lawns1 glowing in sunsets1 flashing through storm-clouds1 gilding our wakeful hours1 irradiating sleep1 it is ever around1 within us1 eager to sweeten our labors1 to purify our thoughts4 ,nature is a vast treasure-house of beauty1 whereof the key is in the human heart4 ,but many are the hearts that have never opened far enough to disclose the precious key enfolded in their depths4 ,whole peoples are at this moment ignorant that they live amid such wealth4 ,as with them now1 so in the remote primitive times of our own race1 before history was1 nature was almost speechless to man4 ,the earth was a waste1 or but a wide hunting ground or pasturage2 and human life a round of petty animal circles1 scarcely sweeping beyond the field of the senses2 until there gradually grew up the big-eyed ,greek and the deep-souled ,hebrew4 ,then1 through creative thought1--that is1 thought quickened and exalted by an inward thirst for the beautiful1--one little corner of ,europe became radiant1 and the valley of ,tempe and the wooded glens of ,parnassus shone for the first time on the vision of men2 for their eyes--opened from long sleep by inward stirring--were become as mirrors1 and gave back the light of nature3 ,auxiliar light ,came from their minds1 which on the setting sun ,bestowed new splendor4#a #a ,wordsworth4 ,and man1 heated by the throbs of his swelling heart1 made gods after his own image1--forms of such life and power and harmony that the fragments of them1 spared by time1 are still guarded as faultless models of manhood4 ,and the vales and groves and streams were peopled with beauteous shapes4 ,and the high places were crowned with temples which1 in their majestic purity1 look as though they had been posited there from above by heavenly hands4 ,and by the teemful might of sculptors and painters and poets the dim past was made resurgent and present in glorious transfiguration4 ,and the moral law was grasped at by far-reaching philosophies4 ,in this affluence of genial activity so much truth was embodied in so much beauty1 that by the products of the ,greek mind even the newer1 the deeper1 the wiser ,christian spirit is still instructed1 still exalted4 ,in ,asia1 too1 a chosen people early made a revelation of the beautiful4 ,the ,hebrews were introspective4 ,at once ardent and thoughtful1 passionate and spiritual1 their vigorous natures were charged with fiery materials for inward conflicts4 ,out of the secret chambers of troubled souls their poets and prophets sent forth cries of despair and of exultation1 of expostulation and self-reproach1 that ever find an echo in the conscience-smitten1 sorrow-laden bosom of man4 ,the power and wisdom of ,god they saw as no other ancient people had seen them4 ,in the grandeurs and wonders of creation they could behold the being and the might and the goodness of the ,creator4 ,the strong1 rich hearts of their seers yearned for a diviner life1 in the deep1 true consciousness they felt that there can be peace and joy to man only through reconcilement with ,god4 ,and feeling their own unworthiness and impurity1 as well as that of their people1 they uttered their spiritual desires1 and their aspirations and disappointments and indignations and humiliations1 in strains that make their great writings sound like one long1 impassioned1 rhythmic wail through the bars of a dungeon4 ,gloomy1 wrathful1 and intense1 their utterances are grand and pathetic and sublime2 but the beautiful plays through them1 and gilds their highest points as the white crests do the billows of a black1 tempestuous sea4 ,save these two1 no other nations of antiquity1 except the ,hindoos1 seem to have had more than a superficial susceptibility to the beautiful4 ,the ,romans learnt the arts from the ,greeks1 whom they imitated1 at a wide distance1 in poetry as well as in sculpture and architecture4 ,the remnants of art found in the valley of the ,nile prove the ,egyptians to have had the germ without the vitality to unfold it4 ,in the literature of the ,hindoos there are currents of pure poetry and of biblical depth4 ,in passing down from ancient to modern times the ,persians and the ,arabians light the long way with scintillations from the beautiful4 ,the ugly semi-barbarian darkness of the ,middle ,ages in ,europe was first broken by the light that shone from the spires of ,gothic cathedrals in the eleventh century4 ,about the twelfth century the ,german mind was further illuminated by that mysterious1 visionary1 titanic1 ,teutonic epic1 the ,niebelungen ,lied2 and a little later appeared the troubadours in the south of ,europe and the minnesingers 7love-singers7 in ,germany4 ,next came ,dante and ,giotto in ,italy1 then ,chaucer in ,england2 so that by the end of the fourteenth century1 poetry and the arts1 the offspring of the beautiful1--and who can have no other parentage1--had established themselves in the modern ,european mind1 and have since1 with varying vigor of life1 upheld themselves among ,christian nations4 ,to these they are now confined4 ,in the most advanced of ,mahometan and heathen peoples sensibility to beauty is hardly awakened1 and among savages it seems scarcely to exist1 so deeply is it dormant4 ,thus to indicate when and by whom the beautiful has been recognized will further us in the endeavor to learn wherein consists that which1 enriching the world of man so widely and plenteously1 is deeply enjoyed by so few4 ,were the beautiful1 like size and shape and strength and nimbleness1 cognizable by intellectual perception1 even the ,hottentot would get to know something of it in the forest1 along with the grosser qualities of trees and valleys4 ,were it liable to be seized by the discursive and ratiocinative intellect1 the most eminent statesman or lawyer or general would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty2 the ,roman would have shone in arts as in arms2 the ,spartan would not have been so barren where the ,athenian was so prolific4 ,but beauty is felt1 not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced4 ,its presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul1 by a joyous sentimental recognition1 not by a discernment of the understanding4 ,when we exclaim1 ,how beautiful6 there is always emotion1 and delightful1 expansive1 purifying emotion4 ,whence this mysterious cleansing thrill8 ,thence1 that the recognition of beauty ever denotes1 ever springs out of1 sympathy with the creative spirit whence all things have their being4 ,the beautiful1 then1 is not subject to the intellect4 ,we cannot demonstrate or coldly discover it2 we cannot weigh or measure it4 ,further to illustrate this position3 we do not see with our outward eye any more than we do with spectacles4 ,the apparent ocular apparatus is but the passive1 unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown through it upon a fine interior fibre1 the optic nerve2 and even this does not take cognizance of the object1 but is only another conductor1 carrying the image still farther inward1 to the intellectual nerves of the brain2 and not until it reaches them do we see the object1 not until then is its individuality and are its various physical qualities1 size1 shape1 etc41 apprehended4 ,and now the intellect itself becomes a conductor1 transmitting still deeper inward to the seat of emotion the image of the object2 and not until it reaches that depth is its beauty recognized4 ,in all her structures and arrangements ,nature is definite1 precise1 and economical4 ,in subdivision of labor she is minute and absolute1 providing for every duty its special exclusive agent4 ,in the mind there is as severe a sundering of functions as in the body1 and the intellect can no more encroach upon or act for the mental sensibilities than the stomach can at need perform the office of the heart1 or the liver that of the lungs4 ,true1 no ripe results in the higher provinces of human life can be without intimate alliance between the mental sensibilities and the intellect2 nevertheless they are in essence as distinct from one another as are the solar heat and the moisture of the earth1 without whose constant coperation no grain or fruit or flower can sprout or ripen4 ,we live not merely in a world of material facts1 and of objects and things cognizable through the senses1 but also in a spiritual world4 ,we live not only in presence of visible creation1 but in presence of the invisible ,creator4 ,with the creation we are in contact through the intellect4 ,knowledge of all objects and the qualities of objects that are within reach of the senses2 distance and other material relations2 the bonds of cause and effect and of analogy1 that bind all created things in countless multiplicity of subtle relations1--these the intellect gathers in its grasp4 ,but with the ,creator we are in communication only through feeling4 ,the presence1 the existence of ,god cannot by pure intellect be demonstrated3 it must be felt in order to be proved4 ,the mass of objects and relations presented to us in nature the intellect can learn1 count1 and arrange2 but the life that incessantly permeates the whole and every part1 the spirit that looks out from every object and every fact1--of the range and pitch of whose power we have a faint token in the tornado and the earthquake1--of this divine essence we should not have even an intimation through the intellect alone4 ,not chemists1 astronomers1 mechanicians have uttered the deepest thoughts about ,god1 but prophets and poets3 not ,davys1 but ,coleridges2 not ,herschels1 but ,wordsworths4 ,it is a common belief1 indeed1 that men addicted to the exact sciences are rather wanting than otherwise in power to appreciate the invisible1 a belief pungently embodied by ,wordsworth in the lines1-- ,physician art thou8 one all eyes1 ,philosopher6 a fingering slave1 ,one that would peep and botanize ,upon his mother's grave8 ,this is as much under the mark as is above it that saying of some one1 ,an undevout astronomer is mad4 ,a man's being endowed with rare mathematical talent is no cause why he should or should not be devout4 ,his gifts to weigh and measure the stars are purely intellectual2 and nature being seldom profuse upon one individual1--as she was upon ,pascal and ,newton1--the presumption as to an astronomer1 of whom we know nothing1 would be that what may be termed his emotive appreciation of stars and stellar systems is probably not so full as his intellectual4 ,and no amount or quality of intellectual insight can supply or compensate a want of sensibility4 ,no matter how many hundreds of millions of miles he may pierce into space1 he has still to do with the visible and calculable4 ,but religion is the putting of the human mind in relation with the invisible1 the incalculable4 ,a man gets no nearer to ,god through a telescope than through a microscope1 and no nearer through either than through the naked eye4 ,who cannot recognize the divine spirit in the hourly phenomena of nature and of his own mind will not be helped by the differential calculus1 or any magnitude or arrangement of telescopic lenses4 ,that we ever live not only in a material1 but also in a spiritual world1 can be easily apprehended without at all entangling ourselves in the web-work of metaphysics4 ,the least of our acts or motions1 is it not always preceded by a thought1 a volition1 a something intangible1 invisible8 ,all that we voluntarily do is1 must be1 an offspring of mind4 ,the waving of the hand is never a simple1 it is a compound process3 mind and body1 spirit and matter1 concur in it4 ,the visible1 corporeal movement is but the outward expression of an inward1 incorporeal movement4 ,and so in all our acts and motions1 from birth till death2 they issue out of the invisible within us2 they are feelings actualized1 thoughts embodied4 ,the embodiment is perishable1 the source of it imperishable4 ,it is not a recondite1 super-subtle1 metaphysical or psychological postulate1 it is a palpable1 and may be and ought to be a familiar fact1 that each one of us is ruled by the eternal and invisible within us4 ,now1 just as our words and deeds and movements stand to our mind1 as being the utterance and embodiment of that1 so do we stand towards ,deity1 being the utterance and embodiment of the divine thought and will4 ,as all our doings are but exhibitions of our minds1 so ourselves are manifestations of ,god4 ,through all things shines the eternal soul4 ,the more perfect the embodiment1 the more translucent is the soul2 and when this is most transparent1 making the body luminous with the fullness of its presence1 there is beauty1 which may be said to be the most intense and refined incarnation and exhibition of the divine spirit4 ,behind and within every form of being is immanent the creative power2 and thence1 in proportion as this power discloses itself1 is object1 act1 or emotion beautiful4 ,thus is beauty always spiritual1 a revelation more or less clear of the creative spirit4 ,hence our emotion in presence of the truly beautiful1 which calms and exalts us4 ,hence evil never is1 cannot be1 beautiful3 the bad is1 must be1 ugly4 ,evil consists in the deficiency of the divine creative spirit1 whose fullness gives1 is1 beauty4 ,evil is imperfection1 unripeness1 shapelessness1 weakness in1 or opposition to1 the creative spirit4 ,evil is life that is unhealthy1 short-coming4 ,wherever there is full1 unperverted life1 there is1 there must be1 beauty4 ,the beautiful blossoms on every stem of unpoisoned power4 ,the sap of sound life ever molds itself into forms of beauty4 ,but however rich the exhibition of the divine soul1 however glowing with perfection the form1 however noble the act and pure the feeling1 the richness1 the perfection1 the nobleness1 the purity will be lost on us1 unless within us there be sympathy with the spirit whence they flow4 ,only by spirit can spirit be greeted4 ,thus beauty only becomes visible--,i might say only becomes actual--by the fire kindled through the meeting of a perfection out of us and an inward appetite therefor4 ,and it is the flaming of this fire1 thus kindled1 that lights up to us the whole world wherein we live1 the inward and the outward4 ,this fire unlighted1 and on the face of nature there is darkness1 in our own minds there is darkness4 ,for though all nature teems with the essence and the outward mold of beauty1 to the unkindled mind beauty is no more present then was ,banquo's ghost to the guests of ,macbeth4 ,macbeth's individual conscience made him see the ghost2 nay1 by a creative potency summoned it3 and so is beauty created there where1 without what ,i may call the sthetic conscience1 it no more exists than do the glories of ,titian and ,claude to the affectionate spaniel who follows his master into a picture-gallery4 ,to the quadruped1 by the organic limitation of his nature1 dead forever is this painted life4 ,by the organic boundlessness of his nature1 man can grasp the life of creation in its highest1 its finest1 its grandest manifestations2 and from these beauty is indivisible4 ,wherever the divine energy is most subtle and expressive1 there glows ever1 in its celestial freshness1 the beautiful4 ,beauty is the happiest marriage between the invisible and the visible4 ,it may be termed the joyfullest look of ,god4 ,blessed is he who can watch and reflect this radiant look4 ,the faculties of such a one become fortified by creative influx4 ,through the exquisite shock of the beautiful he reaps an accession of mental magnetism4 ,thus through the beautiful we commune the most directly with the divine2 and1 other things being equal1 to the degree that men respond to1 are thrilled by1 this vivacity of divine presence1 as announced by the beautiful1 to that degree are they elevated in the scale of being4 ,nature being minute and absolute in subdivision of function1 the law of severalty and independence--than which there is no law more important and instructive--pervades creation4 ,thence the intellectual1 the religious1 the true1 the good1 cannot interchange functions4 ,a man may be sincerely religious and do little for others1 as is seen in anchorites1 and in many one-sided people1 of ,christian as well as of ,mahometan parentage1 who are not anchorites4 ,a man may be immensely intellectual and not value truth4 ,but neither a man's intellect1 nor his preference for truth1 nor his benevolent nor his religious sentiment1 can yield its best fruit without the sunshine of the beautiful4 ,sensibility to the beautiful--itself1 like the others1 an independent inward power--stands to each one of them in a relation different from that which they hold one to the other4 ,the above and other faculties indirectly aid one the other1 and to the complete man their united action is needed2 but feeling for the beautiful directly aids each one1 aids by stimulating it1 by expanding1 by purifying4 ,to the action of every other faculty this one gives vividness and grace4 ,it indues each with privilege of insight into the soul of the object which it is its special office to master4 ,by help of sensibility to the beautiful we have inklings of the essence of things1 we sympathize with the inward life that molds the outward form4 ,hence men highly gifted with this sensibility become creative1 in whatever province of work they strive2 and no man in any province is truly creative except through the subtle energy imparted to him by this sensibility1 this competence to feel the invisible in the visible4 ,the idea is the invisible2 the embodiment thereof is the visible4 ,hence the beautiful is always ideal2 that is1 it enfolds1 embraces1 represents1 with more or less success1 the idea out of which springs the object it illuminates3 it brilliantly enrobes a germinal essence4 ,it is thus a sparkling emanation out of the ,infinite1 and it leads us thither whence it has come4 ,sensibility to the beautiful is thus the light of the whole mind1 illuminating its labors4 ,without it we work in the dark1 and therefore feebly1 defectively4 ,infer thence the immensity of its function4 ,hereby it becomes the chief educator of men and of man2 and where its teaching has not been conspicuous1 there no elevation has been reached4 ,the ,greeks and the ,hebrews would not have been so deeply1 so greatly1 so feelingly known to us1 would not have been the pioneers and inspirers of ,european civilization1 would not have lived on through thousands of years in the minds of the highest men1 had they not1 along with their other rare endowments1 possessed1 in superior1 in unique quality1 this priceless gift of sensibility to the beautiful4 ,through this gift ,shakespeare is the foremost man of ,england1 and through it has done more than any other man to educate and elevate ,england4 ,because the ,italians of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were so rich in this gift1 therefore it is that ,italy is still a shrine to which the civilized world makes annual pilgrimage4 ,the supreme function of this sensibility is to develop1 to educate1 to chasten the highest faculties1 our vast discourse of reason1 our unselfish aspiration1 our deep instinct of truth1 our capacious love4 ,to educate these is its cardinal duty1 and lacking this they remain uneducated4 ,but its beneficent influence is felt likewise in the less elevated of our efforts4 ,the man who makes shoes1 as well as he who makes laws and he who makes poems2 the builder of houses1 with the builder of theologies or cosmogonies2 the engineer1 as well as the artist1 all work under the rays of this illuminator2 and1 other things being equal1 he excels all others on whose work those rays shine with the most sustained and penetrative force4 ',t is the eternal law1 ,that first in beauty shall be first in might4#b #b ,keats4 ,in short1 whatever the mental gift1 in order to get from that gift its best fruit1 the possessor must be incited1 upborne1 enlightened1 inspired by the ideal1 which burns as a transfiguring flame in his mind1 and throws thence its joyful light with every blow of his hand4 ,all good work is more or less creative1 that is1 a co-working with the eternal mind2 and work is good and productive in proportion to the intensity of this coperation4 ,why is it that we so prize a fragment of ,phidias1 a few lines traced by ,raphael8 ,because the minds of those workers were1 more than the minds of most others1 in sympathy with the ,infinite mind4 ,while at work their hands were more distinctly guided by the ,almighty hand2 they felt and embodied more of the spirit which makes1 which is1 life4 ,here is a frame of canvas1 a block of marble1 a pile of stones1 a vocabulary4 ,of the canvas you make a screen1 you build a dwelling with the pile of stones1 chisel a door-sill out of the block1 with the vocabulary you write an essay4 ,and in each case you work well and creatively1 if your work be in harmony with ,god's laws1 if your screen be light1 sightly1 and protective1 your dwelling healthful and commodious1 your sill lie solid and square1 your essay be judicious and sound4 ,but if on the canvas you have a ,christ's head by ,leonardo1 out of the pile of stones a ,strasburg ,cathedral1 from the block of marble a ,venus of ,milo1 with the vocabulary a tragedy of ,hamlet1 you have works which are so creative that they tell on the mind with the vivid1 impressive1 instructive1 never-wearying delight of the works of nature4 ,the men who wrought them were strong to do so through the vigor of their sympathy with what ,plato calls the formative principle of the universe1 they thereby becoming themselves creators1 that is1 poets4 ,and we sacredly guard their creations among our best treasures of human gift1 because they are so spiritually alive that whenever we put ourselves in relation with them they animate us1 they spiritualize our thoughts2 and this they do because the minds whence they issued were radiant centers of ideal power1 that is1 power to conceive the beautiful4 ,but what is ideal power8 the reader may ask4 ,he might likewise ask1 ,what is moral power8 ,and unless he has in his own mind some faculty of moral estimation1 no answer will help him4 ,that which comes to us through feeling cannot be intellectually defined1 can only be appreciated through feeling4 ,by describing its effects and accompaniments we approach to a knowledge of what it is4 ,by means of a foot-rule you can make clear to every member of a crowd what is the height of the ,apollo ,belvedere1 and the exact length of the statue's face2 and each one can for himself verify the accuracy of your statement4 ,but not with a like distinctness and vivacity of assent can you get the crowd to go along with you as to the ,apollo's beauty4 ,acknowledgment of the beautiful in art implies a degree of culture and a native susceptibility not to be found in every accidental gathering4 ,full and sincere assent to your declaration that the statue is very beautiful presupposes a high ideal in the mind2 that is1 a lofty pre-attained idea of what is manly beauty4 ,but after all1 the want of unanimity of assent to a moral or an sthetic position1 does it not come from the difficulty and subtlety of the idea to be pre-attained8 ,assent even to an intellectual proposition1 does not it too presuppose an ideal in the mind of him who assents8 ,when you show by visible measurement that the statue is eight feet high1 whoever understands what you mean must have already in his head the idea of what one foot is2 that is1 he must carry within him an ideal4 ,no tittle of information1 not the slightest accession of knowledge1 will you derive from the measurement even of the area of a hall or of the cubic contents of a block1 unless you bring with you in your mind an idea1 an ideal1 of what is a superficial or a cubic square foot4 ,attempts to give a notion of what the beautiful is1 by enumerating some of the physical conditions that are found to be present in artistic figures or persons distinguished for beauty1 or attempts to produce what shall be beautiful1 by complying with these conditions1 come no nearer to the aim than do compounded mineral waters to the briskness and flavor of a fresh draught from the original spring4 ,in the analysis there may be no flaw2 the ingredients are chemically identical in quality and proportion2 but the nameless1 inimitable1 inscrutable life is wanting3 the mixing has been done by a mechanical1 not by a creative hand4 ,haydon says1 ,the curve of the circle is excess1 the straight line is deficiency1 the ellipsis is the degree between1 and that curve1 added to or united with proportion1 regulates the form and features of a perfect woman4 ,mr4 ,d4,r4 ,hay1 in a series of books1 professes to have discovered the principles of beauty in the law of harmonic ratio1 without1 however1 pretending1 as he modestly and wisely declares1 to give rules for that kind of beauty which genius alone can produce in high art4 ,the discovery of ,mr4 ,hay is curious and fascinating1 and1 like the announcement of ,haydon1 may give practical hints to artists and others4 ,but no intellectual process or ingenuity can make up for the absence of emotional warmth and refined selection4 ,beauty1 the foe of excess and vacuity1 blooms1 like genius1 in the equilibrium of all the forces1 says ,jean ,paul4 ,beauty1 says ,hemsterhuis1 is the product of the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time1 which is like the ,italian definition1 il piu nel uno1 unity in multiplicity1 believed by ,coleridge to contain the principle of beauty4 ,on another page of the ,table ,talk ,coleridge is made to say1 ,you are wrong in resolving beauty into expression or interest2 it is quite distinct2 indeed1 it is opposite1 although not contrary4 ,beauty is an immediate presence1 between which and the beholder nihil est4 ,it is always one and tranquil2 whereas the interesting always disturbs and is disturbed4 ,hegel1 in his sthetic1 defines natural beauty to be the idea as immediate unity1 in so far as this unity is visible in sensuous reality4 ,and a few pages earlier he is more brief and distinct1 calling the beautiful the sensuous shining forth of the idea4 ,and ,schelling1 in his profound treatise on ,the ,relation of the ,plastic ,arts to ,nature1 says1 ,the beautiful is beyond form2 it is substance1 the universal2 it is the look and expression of the spirit of ,nature4 ,were it not better and more precise to say that it is to us the look and expression of the spiritual when this is peering through choicest embodiments8 ,but we will stop with definitions4 ,after endeavoring1 by means of sentences and definitions to get a notion of the beautiful1 one is tempted to say1 as ,goethe did when the idea of the ,divinity was venturously mentioned to him by ,eckermann1 ,dear child1 what know we of the idea of the ,divinity8 and what can our narrow ideas tell of the ,highest ,being8 ,should ,i1 like a ,turk1 name it with a hundred names1 ,i should still fall short1 and1 in comparison with the infinite attributes1 have said nothing4 ,we have called the beautiful the light of the mind2 but there must be mind to be illuminated4 ,if your torch be waved in a chamber set round with bits of granite and slate and pudding-stone1 you will get no luminous reverberation4 ,but brandish it before rubies and emeralds and diamonds6 ,the qualities in the mind must be precious1 in order that the mind become radiant through beauty4 ,to take a broad example4 ,the ,hindoos in their organization have a fine sense of the beautiful1 but they lack mental breadth and bottom2 and hence their life and literature are not strong and manifold1 although in both there are exhibitions of that refinement which only comes of sensibility to the beautiful4 ,the ,chinese1 on the other hand1 are wanting in this sensibility2 hence their prosaic1 finite civilization4 ,but most noteworthy is the contrast between them in religious development4 ,in that of the ,hindoos there was expansion1 vastness1 self-merging in infinitude2 the ,chinese are religiously contracted1 petty1 idolatrous2 a contrast which ,i venture to ascribe1 in large measure1 to the presence in the one case1 and the absence in the other1 of the inspiration of the beautiful4 ,to the same effect individual examples might be cited innumerable4 ,look at ,wordsworth and ,byron1 both preeminent for sensibility to the beautiful2 but1 from deep diverseness in other leading mental gifts1 the one1 through the light of this vivifying power1 became a poet of the propensities and the understanding1 a poet of passion and wit2 the other1 a poet of the reason1 a poet of nature and meditative emotion4 ,to do their best the moral feelings1 too1 need the light and inward stimulus of the beautiful2 but if these feelings are by nature weak1 no strength or intensity of the sense of beauty will have power to get from a mind thus deficient high moral thought or action4 ,if there be present the accomplishment of verse1 we shall have a ,byron2 or1 the other poetic gifts in full measure1 with lack of this accomplishment1 and we may get a ,beckford1 who builds ,fonthill ,abbeys1 and with purity and richness of diction describes palaces1 actual or feigned1 and natural scenery with picturesqueness and genial glow2 or1 the intellectual endowments being mediocre1 we shall have merely a man of superficial taste2 or1 the moral regents being ineffective1 an intellectual sybarite1 or a refined voluptuary4 ,like the sun1 the beautiful shines on healthful field and poisonous fen2 and her warmth will even make flowers to bloom in the fen1 but it is not in her to make them bear refreshing odors or nourishing fruit4 ,as men have body1 intellect1 and moral natures1 so is there physical1 intellectual1 and spiritual beauty1 and each distinct from the others4 ,take first a few examples from the domain of art4 ,the body and limbs of the ,gladiator in the ,louvre may be cited as the exponent of corporeal beauty2 the face of the ,apollo ,belvedere as that of intellectual and physical2 and the ,santo ,sisto ,madonna of ,raphael1 and the ,christ of the ,last ,supper by ,leonardo da ,vinci1 for spiritual4 ,through these radiant creations we look into the transcendent minds of their artists with a chastened1 exalting joy1 not unmingled with pride in our brotherhood with such beauty-lifted co-workers with ,god4 ,among the higher races1 life is affluent in examples of the three kinds of beauty1 two of them1 and even all three1 at times united in one subject4 ,children and youth offer the most frequent instances of physical beauty4 ,napoleon's face combined in high degree both physical and intellectual1 without a trace of moral beauty4 ,discoveries in science1 and the higher scientific processes1 as likewise broad and intense intellectual action1 exemplify often intellectual beauty4 ,of moral beauty history preserves examples which are the brightest jewels1 and the most precious1 in the casket of mankind's memory2 among the most brilliant of which are the trust of ,alexander1 when he drank the draught from the hand of his physician1 though warned that it was poisoned2 the fidelity of the paroled ,regulus1 returning from ,rome to the enemy into the jaws of a certain and cruel death2 ,sir ,philip ,sidney1 wounded unto death1 taking the cup of water untasted from his parched lips1 to give it to a dying soldier2 ,luther at the ,diet of ,worms2 the public life of ,washington2 the life and death of ,socrates1 and especially that last act of washing his body to save the women the trouble of washing it a few hours later1 when it would be a corpse2 and1 lastly1 that most beautiful of lives and most sublime of deaths1 which live in the heart of ,christendom as its exemplar and ever fresh ideal4 ,there is no province of honorable human endeavor1 no clean inlet opened by the senses or the intellect or the feelings1 into which from that vast1 deep1 oceanic spring1 the human soul1 the beautiful does not send its fructifying tides4 ,there is no height in history but is illuminated by its gleam4 ,only through the beautiful can truth attain its full stature2 only through the beautiful can the heart be perfectly purified2 only with vision purged by the beautiful can anything be seen in its totality4 ,all other faculties it makes prolific2 it is the mental generator4 ,it helps to unveil1 and then welds1 the link between the visible and the invisible4 ,it inspires feeling 7which is ever the source of deepest insight7 to discover excellence2 it quickens the mind to creative activity2 it is forever striving upward4 ,without the spiritual fervor of the beautiful1 your religion is narrow and superstitious1 your science cramped and mortal1 your life unripened4 ,in the mind it kindles a flame that discloses the divinity there is in all things4 ,lightning bares to the awed vision the night-shrouded earth2 more vivid than lightning1 the flash of the beautiful reveals to the soul the presence of ,god4 ,,ii4 ,,what ,,is ,,poetry8 ,the better to meet the question1 ,what is poetry8 we begin by putting before it another1 and ask1 ,where is poetry8 ,poetry is in the mind4 ,landscapes1 rainbows1 sunsets1 constellations1 these exist not to the stag1 the hare1 the elephant4 ,to them nature has no aspects1 no appearances modified by feeling4 ,furnished with neither combining intellect nor transmuting sensibility1 they have no vision for aught but the proximate and immediate and the animally necessary4 ,corporeal life is all their life4 ,within the life of mind poetry is born1 and in the best and deepest part of that life4 ,the whole world outside of man1 and1 added to this1 the wider world of his inward motions1 whether these motions interact on one another or be started and modified by what is without them1 all this--that is1 all human life1 in its endless forms1 varieties1 degrees1 all that can come within the scope of man--is the domain of poetry2 only1 to enjoy1 to behold1 to move about in1 even to enter this domain1 the individual man must bear within him a light that shall transfigure whatever it falls on1 a light of such subtle quality1 of such spiritual virtue1 that wherever it strikes it reveals something of the very mystery of being4 ,in many men1 in whole tribes1 this light is so feebly nourished that it gives no illumination4 ,to them the two vast worlds1 the inner and the outer1 are made up of opaque facts1 cognizable1 available1 by the understanding1 and by it handled grossly and directly4 ,things1 conditions1 impressions1 feelings1 are not taken lovingly into the mind1 to be made there prolific through higher contacts4 ,they are not dandled joyfully in the arms of the imagination4 ,imagination6 ,before proceeding a step further1--nay1 in order that we be able to proceed safely1--we must make clear to ourselves what means this great word1 imagination4 ,the simplest intellectual work is to perceive physical objects4 ,having perceived an object several times1 the intellect lifts itself to a higher process1 and knows it when it sees it again1 remembers it4 ,perception is the first1 the simplest1 the initiatory intellectual process1 memory is the second4 ,higher than they1 and rising out of them1 is a third process1 the one whereby are modified and transmuted the mental impressions of what is perceived or remembered4 ,a mother1 just parted from her child1 recalls his form and face1 summons before her mind's eye an image of him2 and this image is modified by her feelings1 she seeing him in attitudes and relations in which she had never seen him before1 cheerful or sad according to her mood4 ,this she could not do by aid of memory alone2 she could not vary the impress of her boy left on the brain2 she could not vividly reproduce it in shifting1 rapidly successive conditions2 she could not modify and diversify that impress2 in a word1 she could not liberate it4 ,memory could only re-give her1 with single1 passive fidelity1 what she had seen1 unmodified1 motionless1 unenlivened1 like a picture of her boy on canvas4 ,urge intellectual activity to the phase above memory1 and the mental image steps out from its immobility1 becomes a changeful1 elastic figure1 brightened or darkened by the lights and shadows cast by the feelings2 the intellect1 quick now with plastic power1 varying the image in position and expression1 obedient to the demands of the feelings1 of which it is ever the ready instrument4 ,this third process is imagination4 ,through this mode of intellectual action the materials gathered in the mind are endlessly combined and modified4 ,in all intellectual activity1 beyond bare perception and memory1 imagination in some degree is and must be present4 ,it is in fact the mind handling its materials1 and in no sphere1 above the simplest1 can the mind move without this power of firmly holding and molding facts and relations1 phenomena and interior promptings and suggestions4 ,to the forensic reasoner1 to the practical master-worker in whatever sphere1 such a power is essential not less than to the ideal artist or to the weaver of fictions4 ,imagination is thus the abstract action1 that is1 the most intense action1 of the intellect4 ,when ,i run over in my mind1 and in the order of their service1 the first seven presidents of the ,united ,states1 ,washington1 ,adams1 ,jefferson1 ,madison1 ,monroe1 ,adams1 ,jackson1 ,i exert only memory4 ,the moment ,i begin to compare or contrast one with another1 or to give the character of any of them1 ,i put into play the higher1 the imaginative action2 for1 to draw an historical character1 the facts collected by memory must be shaped and colored and organized1 the details gathered must be combined into a whole by the intellect1 which being a mere tool1 the success of the result 7the tool being of a temper to do the work laid on it7 will depend on the quality of the powers that handle it1 that is1 on the writer's gifts of sympathy4 ,the degree and fullness wherewith the imaginative power shall be called upon depending thus on faculties of feeling1 thence it is that the word imagination has come to be appropriated to the highest exercise of the power1 that1 namely1 which is accomplished by those few who1 having more than usual emotive capacity in combination with sensibility to the beautiful1 are hereby stimulated to mold and shape into fresh forms the stores gathered by perception and memory1 or the material originated within the mind through its creative fruitfulness4 ,in strictness1 this exaltation of intellectual action should be called poetic imagination4 ,to imagine is1 etymologically speaking1 with the mind to form in the mind an image2 that is1 by inward power to produce an interior form1 a something substantial made out of what we term the unsubstantial4 ,to imagine is thus always1 in a certain sense1 to create2 and even men of dullest mentality have this power in kind4 ,the degree in which men have it makes one of the chief differences among them4 ,the power is inherent1 is implied in the very existence of the human mind4 ,when it is most lively the mind creates out of all it feels and hears and sees1 taking a simple sight or hint or impression or incident1 and working out images1 making much out of little1 a world out of an atom4 ,akin herein to the supreme creative might1 the man of highest imagination1 the poet1 unrolls out of his brain1 through vivid energy1 new worlds1 peopled with thought1 throbbing with humanity4 ,when we imagine1 therefore1 we hold an image in the mind1 grasping it with spiritual fingers1 just as by our corporeal fingers a physical substance is grasped4 ,now the poetic mind in handling the image tosses it with what might be called a sportive earnest delight1 and through this power and freedom of play elicits by sympathetic fervor1 from its very core1 electric rays1 wherein the subject glows like the sculpture on an inwardly illuminated urn2 rare insights being thus vouchsafed to clearest imaginative vision1--insights gained never but through sensibilities elevated and purified by aspirations after1 and gleaming glimpses of1 the absolute and ideal1 the intellect being used as an obedient cheerful servant4 ,the sensibility that is so finely strung as to have these glimpses1 revels in them as its fullest happiness1 and with its whole might seeks and courts them4 ,hence the mind thus privileged to live nearer than others to the absolutely true1 the spiritual ideal1 is ever plying its privilege3 conceiving1 heightening1 spiritualizing1 according to the vision vouchsafed it2 through this vision beholding everywhere a better and fairer than outwardly appears2 painting nature and humanity1 not in colors fictitious or fanciful1 but in those richer1 more lucent ones which such minds1 through the penetrating insight of the higher imagination1 see more truly as they are than minds less creatively endowed4 ,thus is imagination a power inherent in1 essential to1 all intellectual action that ranges above simple perception and memory2 a power without which the daily business of life even could not go on1 being that power whereby the mind manipulates1 so to speak1 its materials4 ,in its higher phasis it may be defined as the intellect stimulated by feeling to multiply its efforts for the ends of feeling2 and in its highest it may be said to be intellect winged by emotion to go forth and gather honey from the bloom of creation4 ,imagination1 then1 being intellect in keenest chase1 and the intellectual part of the mind being1 when moved in concert with the effective part1 but a tool of this1 what are the feelings or conditions of feeling of which intellect becomes the instrument in the production of poetry8 ,cast your look on a page filled with the titles of ,shakespeare's plays4 ,what worlds of throbbing life lie behind that roll6 ,then run over the persons of a single drama3 that one bounded inclosure1 how rich in variety and intensity1 and truth of feeling6 ,and when you shall have thus cursorily sent your mind through each and all1 tragic1 comic1 historic1 lyric1 you will have traversed in thought1 accompanied by hundreds of infinitely diversified characters1 wide provinces of human sorrow and joy4 ,why are these pictures of passion so uniquely prized1 passed on from generation to generation1 the most precious heir-loom of the ,english tongue1 to-day as fresh as on the morning when the paper was moist with the ink wherewith they were first written8 ,because they have in them more fullness and fineness and fidelity than any others4 ,the poet has more life in him than other men1 and ,shakespeare has in him more life than any other poet1 life manifested through power of intellect exalted through union with power of sympathy1 the embodiments whereof are rounded1 enlarged1 refined1 made translucent by that gift of sensibility to the fair and perfect#c whereby1 according to its degree1 we are put in more loving relation to the work of ,god1 and gain the clearest insights into his doings and purposes2 a gift without which in richest measure ,shakespeare might have been a notable historian or novelist or philosopher1 but never the supreme poet he is4 #c ,see preceding ,essay4 ,when ,coriolanus1 having led the ,volscians to ,rome1 encamps under its walls1 and the ,romans1 in their peril and terror1 send to him a deputation to move him from his vengeful purpose1 the deputies1--the foremost citizens of ,rome and the relations and former friends of ,coriolanus1--having declared their business in a very modest and humble manner1 he is described by ,plutarch as stern and austere1 answering them with much bitterness and high resentment of the injuries done him4 ,what was the temper as well as the power of ,coriolanus1 we learn distinctly enough from these few words of ,plutarch4 ,but the task of the poet is more than this4 ,to our imagination1 that is1 to the abstracting intellect roused by sympathy to a semi-creative state1 he must present the haughty ,roman so as to fill us with an image of him that shall in itself embody that momentous hour in the being of the young republic4 ,he must dilate us to the dimensions of the man and the moment2 he must so enlarge and warm our feeling that it shall take in1 and delight in1 the grandeur of the time and the actors4 ,the life of ,rome1 of ,rome yet to be so mighty1 is threatened by one of her own sons4 ,this vast history1 to be for future centuries that of the world1 a ,roman seemed about to quench1 about to rase the walls that were to embrace the imperial metropolis of ,europe1 ,asia1 and ,africa4 ,of what gigantic dimensions must he be1 this ,roman6 ,now hear ,menenius1 a former friend and admirer of ,coriolanus1 depict him4 ,having described1 in those compressed sinewy phrases which ,shakespeare has at command1 the change in his nature1 he adds1 ,when he walks1 he moves like an engine1 and the ground shrinks before his treading4 ,he is able to pierce a corselet with his eye2 he talks like a knell1 and his hum is a battery4 ,he sits in his state1 as a thing made for ,alexander4 ,what he bids be done is finished with his bidding3 he wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in4 ,hear how a mother's heart1 about to break1 from the loss of her son1 utters its grief when it has the privilege of using a voice quivering with poetic fervor4 ,the ,french king bids ,lady ,constance be comforted3 she answers1-- ,no1 ,i defy all counsel1 all redress1 ,but that which ends all counsel1 true redress1 ,death1 death4 ,o amiable lovely death6 ,thou odoriferous stench6 sound rottenness6 ,arise forth from the couch of lasting night1 ,thou hate and terror to prosperity1 ,and ,i will kiss thy detestable bones2 ,and put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows2 ,and ring these fingers with thy household worms2 ,and stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust1 ,and be a carrion monster like thyself3 ,come1 grin on me2 and ,i will think thou smil'st3 ,and buss thee as thy wife6 ,misery's love1 ,o1 come to me6 ,in these two passages from ,coriolanus and ,king ,john what magnificence of hyperbole6 ,the imagination of the reader1 swept on from image to image1 is strained to follow that of the poet4 ,and yet1 to the capable1 how the pile of amplification lifts out the naked truth4 ,read these passages to a score of well-clad auditors1 taken by chance from the thoroughfare of a wealthy city1 or from the benches of a popular lecture-room4 ,to the expanded mold wherein the passages are wrought1 a few--five or six1 perhaps1 of the twenty--would be able to fit their minds1 zestfully climbing the poet's climax4 ,to some they would be dazzling1 semi-offensive extravagance1 prosaic minds not liking1 because seeing but dimly by1 the poetically imaginative light4 ,and to some they would be grossly unintelligible1 the enjoyment of the few full appreciators seeming to them unnatural or affected4 ,now1 the enjoyment of the few appreciators1 what is its source8 ,by these passages certain feelings in them are made to vibrate and are pitched to a high key4 ,a very comprehensive word is feelings4 ,what is the nature of those feelings thus wrought upon8 ,the elementary feelings of our nature1 when in healthful function1 are capable of emitting spiritual light2 and1 when exalted to their purest action1 do and must emit such1 the inward fire sending forth clear flame unmixed with smoke4 ,to perceive this light1 and1 still more1 to have your path illuminated thereby1 implies the present activity of some of the higher human sensibilities2 and to be so organized as to be able to embody in words1 after having imagined1 personages1 conditions1 and conjunctions whence this light shall flash on and ignite the sensibilities of others1 implies1 besides vivid sympathies and delight in the beautiful1 a susceptibility to the manifestations of moral and intellectual life which is enjoyed only by him in whom the nobler elements of being are present in such intensity1 proportions1 and quality1 and are so commingled1 that he can reproduce life itself with translucent truthfulness1 he becoming1 through this exalting susceptibility1 poet or maker4 ,what constitutes the wealth of human life8 ,is it not fullness and richness of feeling8 ,to refine this fullness1 to purify this richness1 to distill the essence out of this wealth1 to educate the feelings by revealing their subtle possibilities1 by bringing to light the divinity there is within and behind them1 this is the poet's part2 and this1 his great part1 he can only do by being blest with more than common sympathy with the spirit of the ,almighty ,creator1 and thence clearer insight into his work and will4 ,merely to embody in verse the feelings1 thoughts1 deeds1 scenes of human life1 is not the poet's office2 but to exhibit these as having attained1 or as capable of attaining1 the power and beauty and spirituality possible to each4 ,the glorifier of humanity the poet is1 not its mere reporter2 that is the historian's function4 ,the poet's business is not with facts as such1 or with inferences1 but with truth of feeling1 and the very spirit of truth4 ,his function is ideal2 that is1 from the prosaic1 the individual1 the limited1 he is to lift us up to the universal1 the generic1 the boundless4 ,in compassing this noble end he may1 if such be his bent1 use the facts and feelings and individualities of daily life2 and1 by illuminating and ennobling them he will approve his human insight1 as well as his poetic gift4 ,the generic in sentiment1 the universal1 the infinite1 can only be reached and recognized through the higher feelings1 through those whose activity causes emotion4 ,the simple impulses1 the elementary loves1 are in themselves bounded in their action near and direct2 but growing round the very fountain of life1 having their roots in the core of being1 they are liable to strike beyond their individual limits1 and this they do with power when under their sway the whole being is roused and expanded4 ,when by their movement the better nature is urged to heroism and self-sacrifice1 as in the story of ,damon and ,pythias1 the reader or beholder is lifted into the atmosphere of finest emotion2 for then the impulse has reached its acme of function1 and playing in the noonday of the beautiful1 the contemplation of it purges and dilates us4 ,we are upraised to the disinterested mood1 the poetical1 in which mood there is ever imaginative activity refined by spiritual necessities4 ,it is not extravagant to affirm that when act or thought reaches the beautiful1 it resounds through the whole being1 tuning it like a high strain of sweetest music4 ,thus in the poetical 7and there is no poetry until the sphere of the beautiful is entered7 there is always a reverberation from the emotional nature4 ,reverberation implies space1 an ample vault of roof or of heaven4 ,in a tight1 small chamber there can be none4 ,if feeling is shut within itself1 there is no recho4 ,its explosion must rebound from the roomy dome of sentiment1 in order that it become musical4 ,the moment you enter the circle of the beautiful1 into which you can only be ushered by a light within yourself1 a light kindled through livelier recognition of the divine spirit1--the moment you draw breath in this circle you find yourself enlarged1 spiritualized1 buoyed above the self4 ,no matter how surrounded1 or implicated1 or enthralled1 while you are there1 be it but for a few moments1 you are liberated4 ,no more--no more--oh6 never more on me ,the freshness of the heart can fall like dew1 ,which out of all the lovely things we see ,extracts emotions beautiful and new1 ,hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee4 ,think'st thou the honey with those objects grew8 ,alas6 't was not in them1 but in thy power ,to double even the sweetness of a flower4 ,all who joy would win ,must share it2 happiness was born a twin4 ,he entered in the house1--his home no more1 ,for without hearts there is no home--and felt ,the solitude of passing his own door ,without a welcome2 there he long had dwelt1 ,there his few peaceful days ,time had swept o'er1 ,there his worn1 bosom and keen eye would melt ,over the innocence of that sweet child1 ,his only shrine of feelings undefiled4 ,these three passages are from a poem in which there is more wit than poetry1 and more cynicism than either2 a poem in spirit unsanctified1 ,mephistophelian1 written by a man of the world1 a terrible egotist1 blas already in early manhood1 in whose life1 through organization1 inherited temperament1 and miseducation1 humanity was so cramped1 distorted1 envenomed1 that the best of it was in the fiery sway of the more urgent passions1 his inmost life being1 as it must always be with poets1 inwoven into his verse4 ,from the expiring volcano in his bosom his genius1 in this poem1 casts upon the world a lurid flame1 making life look pale or fever-flushed4 ,with unslumbering vivacity1 human nature is exhibited in that misleading light made by the bursting of half-truths that relate to its lower side1 a light the more deceptions from the sparkling accompaniment of satire and wit4 ,above the pungent secularities1 the nimble intellectualities1 the specious animalism1 the derisive skepticism1 the snapping personalities1 the witty worldliness1 that interlace and constitute the successive cantos of ,don ,juan1 the passages just quoted and similar ones 7they are not many7 rise1 as above the desires and the discontents1 the plots and contentions1 the shrewd self-seekings of a heated1 noisy city rises a ,gothic spire1 aspiring1 beautiful1 drawing most of its beauty from its aspiration1 on whose pinnacle1 calmly glistening in the upper air1 plays the coming and the parting day1 while shadows fill the streets below1 and whose beauty throws over the town a halo that beckons men from afar4 ,the spire1 in its steadfast tranquillity and its beauty1 so unlike the restless wrangling dissonance below it1 grew nevertheless out of the same hearts that make the dissonance1 and1 typifying what is spiritual and eternal in them1 tends by its ideal presence to enlarge and uplift those by whose eyes it is sought4 ,these upshootings in ,don ,juan irradiate the cantos1 giving an attractiveness which draws to them eyes that otherwise would not have known them2 and if too pure in their light and too remote to mingle directly with the flare and flash that dazzle without illuminating1 silently they shine and steadily1 an unconscious heavenly influence1 above these coruscations of earthly thoughts1--thoughts telling from their lively numerousness1 but neither grand nor deep4 ,from the same solar center fall frequently single rays that make lines and stanzas glisten1 and but for which this poem1 lacking their perfusive light1 would soon pass into oblivion2 for from the beautiful it is that the satire1 the wit1 the voluptuousness get their sparkle and their sheen4 ,if passages morally censurable are hereby made more captivating1 we are not content with saying that ,god's sun fructifies and beautifies poison-oak and hemlock2 but we affirm that the beautiful1 being by its nature necessarily pure1 communicates of its quality to whoever becomes aware of it1 and thus in some measure counterweighs the lowering tendency4 ,moreover1 the morally bad1 deriving its character of evil from incompleteness1 from the arresting or the perversion of good1 like fruit plucked unripe1 and being therefore outside the pale of the beautiful 7the nature of which is completeness1 fullness1 perfection of life7 cannot by itself be made captivating through the beautiful4 ,iago and ,edmund are poetical as parts of a whole2 and when in speech they approach the upper region of thought1 it is because the details allotted to them have to be highly wrought for the sake of the general plot and effect1 and further1 because humanity and truth speak at times through strange organs4 ,besides1 the ideal may be used to show more glaringly the hideousness of evil1 and thence ,iago and ,edmund1 as ideal villains1 through the very darkness in which only poetic art could have enveloped them1 help us by indirection to see and value the lights that surround the noble and the good4 ,in healthy function all the feelings are pure and moral1 those whose action is most earthly and animal and selfish uniting themselves at their highest with the spiritual1 for performance whose compass reaches beyond an individual1 momentary good4 ,a burglar or a murderer may exhibit courage2 but here1 a manly quality backing baseness and brutality for selfish1 short-sighted ends1 there is an introverted and bounded action1 no expansive upward tendency1 and thence no poetry4 ,but courage1 when it is the servant of principle for large1 unselfish ends1 becomes poetical1 exhibiting the moral beautiful1 as in the fable of ,curtius and the fact 7or fable7 of ,winkelried4 ,in the poetical there is always enlargement1 exaltation1 purification2 animal feeling1 self-seeking propensity1 becoming so combined with the higher nature as to rise above themselves1 above the self4 ,the lioness1 pursuing the robber of her cub1 if in her rage she scarcely heed that he 7to stay her steps7 has dropped the cub in her path1 but1 casting at it a glance of recognition1 bounds with a wilder howl after the robber1 the incident is purely bestial1 an exhibition of sheer brute fury1 and as such repulsive and most unpoetical4 ,but let her1 instantly drawing her fiery eye from the robber1 stop1 and for the infuriated roar utter a growl of leonine tenderness over her recovered cub1 and our sympathy leaps towards her4 ,through the red glare of rage there shines suddenly a stream of white light1 gushing from one of the purest fountains3 wrathful fury is suddenly subdued by love4 ,a moment before she was possessed with savage fierceness1 her blood boiling with hate and revenge2 now it glows with a mother's joy4 ,her nature rises to the highest whereof it is capable4 ,it is the poetry of animalism4 ,in the poetical1 thought is amplified and ripened1 while purified1 in the calm warmth of emotion4 ,from being emotive1 poetry draws in more of the man1 and higher1 finer powers1 than prose4 ,the poetical has1 must have1 rotundity4 ,no poet ever had a square head4 ,prose1 in its naked quality1 is to poetry what a skeleton is to a moving1 flesh-and-spirit-endowed body4 ,from the skeleton you can learn osteology1 but neither sthetics nor human nature4 ,imaginative prose partakes of the spiritual character of poetry4 ,when a page is changed from poetry into prose it is flattened1 deadened2 when from prose into poetry it is uplifted1 enlivened4 ,you get a something else and a something more4 ,reduced to plain prose1 the famous passage from the mouth of ,viola in ,twelfth ,night would read somewhat thus3 ,my father had a daughter who loved a man and would let no one know of her love1 but concealed it1 until her cheek grew pale with grief1 patiently bearing within her bosom the misery of an untold attachment4 ,now hear the poet3-- ,she never told her love1 ,but let concealment1 like a worm i' the bud1 ,feed on her damask cheek3 she pined in thought3 ,and with a green and yellow melancholy ,she sat like patience on a monument1 ,smiling at grief4 ,what has been done with the prose statement8 ,instead of a bare fact we have a picture1 a twofold picture2 and this1 in its compact1 fresh1 rose-tinted vividness1 carries the whole into our hearts with a tenfold success4 ,through emotional joy we apprehend1 as by the light of an instantaneous ignition1 the state of the sufferer4 ,the prose-report is a smoldering fire on the hearth1 through whose sleepy smoke there comes a partial heat2 the poetic is the flame in full fervor1 springing upward1 illuminating1 warming the heart1 delighting the intellect4 ,the imagination of the reader1 quickened by illustrations so apt and original1 is by their beauty tuned to its most melodious key1 while by the rare play of intellectual vitality his mind is dilated4 ,he has become mentally a richer man1 enriched through the refining and enlarging of his higher sensibilities1 and the activity imparted to his intellect4 ,to say of a man that he is without imagination were to say he is an idiot2 that is1 one lacking the inward force and the inward instruments to grasp and handle the materials collected from without by perception and memory1 and from within by consciousness4 ,to say of a poet that he is without poetic imagination were to say he is no poet4 ,what is poetic imagination8 ,this1 for our theme1 is a vital question4 ,can there be given to it an approximate answer8 ,figure to yourself a company of men and women in presence of a ,september sunset near the sea1 the eye taking in at once ocean and a variegated landscape4 ,the company must not be a score of tawny ,american aborigines1 nor of ,european peasants1 nor of individuals whose life of monotonous labor1 whether for necessaries or luxuries1 has no opportunity or no will for the finer mental culture2 but1 to give aptness to our illustration1 should consist of persons whose being has been unfolded to the tissue of susceptibility to the wonders and beauties of nature1 and whose intellect has been tilled sufficiently to receive and nourish any fresh seed of thought that may be thrown upon it2 in short1 a score of cultivated adults4 ,the impression made by such a scene on such a company is heightened by a rare atmospheric calm4 ,the heart of each gazer fills with emotion1 at first unutterable except by indefinite exclamation2 when one of the company says1-- ,a fairer face of evening cannot be4 ,these words1 making a smooth iambic line1 give some utterance1 and therefore some relief1 to the feeling of all4 ,then another adds1-- ,the holy time is quiet as a nun ,breathless with adoration4 ,instantly the whole scene1 steeped in the beams of the sinking sun1 is flooded with a light that illuminates the sunlight1 a spiritual light4 ,the scene is transfigured before their eyes3 it is as if the heavens had opened1 and inundated all its features with a celestial subtilizing aura4 ,how has this been accomplished8 ,the first line has little of the quality of poetic imagination4 ,a fairer face of evening cannot be4 is simple and appropriate1 but in it there is no fresh glow1 no mysterious throb4 ,above the level of this line rise suddenly the first three words of the second1 the holy time4 ,the presence of a scene where sky1 earth1 and ocean combine for the delight of the beholders puts them in a mood which crowns the landscape with a religious halo4 ,that the time is holy they all feel2 and now1 to make its tranquillity appreciable by filling the heart with it1 the poet adds--is quiet as a nun breathless with adoration4 ,by this master-stroke of poetic power the atmospheric earthly calm is vivified with1 is changed into1 super-earthly calm4 ,by a fresh burst of spiritual light the mind is set sthetically aglow1 as by the beams of the setting sun the landscape is physically4 ,by an exceptionally empowered hand the soul is strung to a high key4 ,fullness and range of sensibility open to the poet#d a wide field of illustration2 its exacting fineness reveals the one that carries his thought into the depths of the reader's mind1 bringing him that exquisite joy caused by keen intellectual power in the service of pure emotion4 #d ,wordsworth4 ,take now other samples from the treasury of choicest poetry4 ,here is one from ,coleridge3-- ,and winter1 slumbering in the open air1 ,wears on his smiling face a dream of spring4 ,here again the intellect is urged to its highest action1 the abstract or imaginative action1 to do the hests of a sensibility so finely wrought by the inward impulsion to seek for the most exquisite that nature can furnish1 that it yields similitudes most delicate1 most apt1 most expressive4 ,milton thus opens the fifth book of ,paradise ,lost3-- ,now morn1 her rosy steps in the eastern clime ,advancing1 sowed the earth with orient pearl4 ,shakespeare makes ,romeo describe daybreak3-- ,and jocund day ,stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops4 ,keats begins ,hyperion with these lines3 ,deep in the shady sadness of a vale1 ,far sunken from the healthy breath of morn4 ,in the ,monody on ,keats1 ,shelley1 describing the lamentation of nature at his death1 concludes a stanza as follows3-- ,morning sought ,her eastern watch-tower1 and1 her hair unbound1 ,wet with the tears that should adorn the ground1 ,dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day2 ,afar the melancholy thunder moaned1 ,pale ,ocean in unquiet slumber lay1 ,and the wild winds flew around1 sobbing in their dismay4 ,such passages are the very flower of poetry1 thought exquisitely dyed in sentiment1 laying suddenly bare a picture with so much light in it that each passage irradiates its page and the reader's mind4 ,by their happiness the similitudes emphasize and enforce the thought2 and they do a higher service than this2 for1 being a breath from the inner life of genius1 they blow power into the reader4 ,to translate these passages into prose were like trying to translate a lily into the mold out of which it springs1 or a bar of ,beethoven into the sounds of the forum1 or the sparkle of stars into the warmth of a coal fire4 ,the best poetry has a far background2 it comes out of deeps within the poet1 unfathomed by himself1 unfathomable4 ,he feels more than he can express4 ,hence the imaginative poet always suggests1 revealing enough to inspirit the reader's higher faculties to strive for more2 not because1 with artistic design1 he leaves much untold1 which he often does1 but because through imaginative susceptibility he at times grasps at and partly apprehends much that cannot be embodied4 ,he feels his subject more largely and deeply than he can see or represent it4 ,to you his work is suggestive because to him the subject suggested more than he could give utterance to4 ,every subject1 especially every subject of poetic capability1 having infinite relations1 he who most apprehends this boundlessness--and indeed because he does apprehend it--can do or say what will open it to you or me2 and the degree of his genius is measured by the extent to which he can present or expose it4 ,the unimaginative gives surface-work1 and1 suggesting nothing1 is at once exhausted4 ,the poetic imagination shows itself in the epithets the poet has at his command1 creative insight drawing an epithet out of the heart of an object2 whence1 there is beneath such an epithet a depth that keeps feeding it with significance1 bringing out its aptness the longer we look4 ,sometimes epithets are brighter than their object2 the unimaginative thus futilely striving to impart power instead of deriving it4 ,to be lasting1 the light of the epithet must be struck by the imagination out of its object4 ,the inspired poet finds a word so sympathetic with the thought that it caresses and hugs it4 ,depth and breadth of nature are implied in the full poetic imagination4 ,the love of the beautiful1 wielding a keen intellect1 needs furthermore rich material to mold1 and only out of the poet's individual resources can this be drawn4 ,to make a high artist1 you must have very much of a man4 ,behind ,paradise ,lost and ,samson ,agonistes is a big ,miltonic man4 ,the poet has to put a great deal of himself1 and the best of him1 into his work2 thence1 for high poetry1 there must be a great deal of high self to put in4 ,he must coin his soul1 and have a large soul to coin2 the best work cannot be made out of materials gathered by memory and fancy4 ,his stream of thought must flow from springs1 not from reservoirs4 ,hence the universal biographical interest in such men2 they have necessarily a rich personality4 ,the passages ,i have cited are all pictures of outward nature1 natural scenes mirrored on the mind1 or rather refracted through it1 and in the act transfigured1 spiritualized2 for such scenes1 having the fortune to fall on the minds of poets1 are reproduced with joyful revelation of their inmost being1 as sunbeams are through a crystal prism4 ,exhibiting material nature spiritualized1 well do these passages show the uplifting character of poetic imagination4 ,but this displays a higher1 and its highest power when1 striking like a thunderbolt into the core of things1 it lays bare mysteries of ,god and of the heart which mere prosaic reason cannot solve or approach1 cannot indeed alone even dimly apprehend4 ,i will now quote passages1 brief ones1 wherein through the poet are opened vast vistas into the shining universe1 or is concentrated in single or few lines the life of man's finer nature1 as in the diamond are condensed the warmth and splendor that lie latent in acres of fossil carbon4 ,when1 in the sixth book of ,paradise ,lost1 ,milton narrates the arrival on the battle-field of the ,son1-- ,attended by ten thousand thousand saints1 and then adds3-- ,far off his coming shone1 in these five short words is a sudden glare of grandeur that dilates the capable mind with light1 and1 as the sublime always does1 with awe4 ,when ,ferdinand1 in ,the ,tempest1 leaps with hair up-staring into the sea1 crying1-- ,hell is empty1 ,and all the devils are here1 the mind is suddenly filled with an image of the tumult and flaming rage of a thunder-storm at sea1 such as words have never elsewhere carried4 ,what a reach in the imaginative stroke6 ,in the first scene of ,faust1 the earth-spirit1 whom ,faust has evoked1 concludes the whirling1 dazzling1 brief1 but gigantic sketch of his function with these words1 the majesty of which translation cannot entirely subdue3-- ,i ply the resounding great loom of old ,time1 ,and work at the ,godhead's live vesture sublime4 ,how ennobling is the idea the mind harbors of humanity1 after taking in these lines from ,wordsworth's ,ode on ,intimations of ,immortality3-- ,but trailing clouds of glory do we come ,from ,god1 who is our home4 ,with a single epithet1 coined for the occasion1 ,keats flashes upon our imagination the dethroned ,saturn and the immensity of his fall3 ,upon the sodden ground ,his old right hand lay nerveless1 listless1 dead1 ,unsceptered2 and his realmless eyes were closed4 ,the ,hyperion of this transcendent genius1 written in his twenty-fourth year1 the year before he died1 is as great poetry as has ever been treasured in words4 ,in it he lavishes poetic wealth as though gold were with him as plenty as silver2 and so on the next page he exceeds1 if possible1 the sublimity of the above lines1 making ,thea write in the catalogue of ,saturn's colossal deprivations1-- ,and all the air ,is emptied of thine hoary majesty4 ,these passages vividly exemplify poetic imagination1 which is the illumining of a capable material by a spiritual light1 a light thrown into it from the glow kindled in the poet's mind with richest sensibilities1 that are refined and sublimated by an exacting1 subtle inward demand for the best they can render4 ,a single flash of new thrilling light irradiates a continent of thought4 ,this is the work of genius1 and genius is ever marked by a deeper sympathy with and recognition of the creative spirit and the divine action1 a sympathy and recognition so sensitive that the spirit and action of the writer are permeated by the divine effluence1 he becoming thereby the interpreter of divine law1 the exhibitor of divine beauty4 ,in these passages the thought of the poet is thrust up through the overlaying crust of the common1 by a warming1 expanding1 inward motion1 which is sped by a vitality so urgent and irresistible that1 to make passage for the new thought1 lightly is lifted a load which1 but for this spiritual efficacy1 could not be stirred1 just as heavy stones are raised by delicate growing plants4 ,to exert this power the poet is always moved at the instance of feeling4 ,poetry having its birth in feeling1 no man can enjoy or value it but through feeling4 ,but what moves him to embody and shape his feeling is that ravishing sentiment which will have the best there is in the feeling1 the sentiment which seeks satisfaction through contemplation or entertainment of the most divine and most perfect1 and ever rises to the top of the refined joy which such contemplation educes4 ,the poetic imagination is the ,ariel of the poet1--his spiritual messenger and ,mercury4 ,a clear look into the above passages would show that the source of their power is in the farther scope or exquisite range the imagination opens to us1 often by a word4 ,for further illustration ,i will take a few other examples1 scrutinizing them more minutely4 ,had ,lorenzo opened the famous passage in ,the ,merchant of ,venice thus1-- ,how calm the moonlight lies upon this bank1 and continued to the end of the dozen lines in the same key1 saying1-- ,there's not the tiniest star that can be seen ,but in its revolution it doth hum1 ,aye chanting to the heavenly cherubins1 his words would not have become celebrated and quotable4 ,but ,lorenzo has the privilege of being one of the mouth-pieces of ,shakespeare1 and so he begins1-- ,how sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank4 ,two words1 sweet and sleep1 put in the place of calm and lies1 lift the line out of prose into poetry4 ,a log lies on a bank2 so does a dead dog1 and the more dead a thing is the more it lies2 but only what is alive sleeps1 and thus the word1 besides an image of extreme stillness1 brings with it what strengthens the image1 the idea of change from liveliness to quiet2 for that which was awake now sleeps2 and the more full the picture of stillness1 the more awake is the mind of the reader1 awakened by the fitness and felicity of the image4 ,the substitution of sweet for calm is1 in a less degree1 similarly enlivening2 for1 used in such conjunction1 sweet is more individual and subtle1 and imports more life1 and thus helps the distinctness and vividness of the picture4 ,how does the poetic ,lorenzo word the other three lines8 ,there's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st1 ,but in his motion like an angel sings1 ,still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins4 ,the words or phrases italicized carry a larger1 or a deeper or a finer meaning than the corresponding ones in the substituted lines4 ,to behold is more than to see3 it is to see contemplatively4 ,the figure prosopopoeia is often but an impotent straining to impart poetic life2 but the personification in in his motion is apt and effective4 ,quiring is an amplification of the immediately preceding sings1 and1 signifying to sing in company with others1 enlarges1 while making more specific1 the thought4 ,and what an image of the freshness of heaven and of youthful immortality is conveyed by the epithet young-eyed6 ,at every step the thought is expanded and beautiful1 reaching at the end of the third line a climax on which the poetically excited mind is left poised in delight4 ,but the passage transformed1 and1 as we might say1 degraded1 is still poetical4 ,there is so much poetry in the thought that the flattening of the phraseology cannot smother it1 the lines still remaining poetically alive1 their poetry shining through the plainer and less figurative words4 ,and the thought is poetical because it is the result of a flight of intellect made by aid of imagination's wings1 these being moved by the soaring demands of the beautiful1 and beating an atmosphere exhaled from sensibility4 ,as ,joubert says1--herein uttering a cardinal sthetic principle1--,it is1 above all1 in the spirituality of ideas that poetry consists4 ,thought that is poetic will glisten through the plainest words2 whereas1 if the thought be prosaic or trite1 all the gilded epithets in the dictionary will not give it the poetic sheen4 ,perdita wishes for ,daffodils ,that come before the swallow dares1 and take ,the winds of ,march with beauty4 ,note the poetic potency in the simple word dares2 how much it carries3 the cold which the swallow has not the courage to confront2 a mental action1 ,i might almost call it1 in the swallow1 who1 after making a recognizance of the season1 determines that it would be rash to venture so far north3 all this is in the single word4 ,for dares write does1 and the effect would be like that of cutting a gash in a rising balloon3 you would let the line suddenly down1 because you take the life out of the thought4 ,and take ,the winds of ,march with beauty4 ,every one is taken at some time or other with the beauty of person or thing1 and the thought is common2 but that the winds of ,march be taken with the beauty of daffodils1 this was a delicate secret which those winds would confide only to one so sympathetic as ,shakespeare4 ,this is poetic imagination1 the intellect sent on far errands by a sensibility which is at once generous and bold1 and fastidious through the promptings and the exactions of the beautiful4 ,in the opening of ,il ,penseroso ,milton describes the shapes that in sprightly moods possess the fancy1 ,as thick and numberless ,as the gay motes that people the sunbeams4 ,put shine in the sunbeams1 for people1 and1 notwithstanding the luminousness of the word substituted1 you take the sparkle out of the line1 which sparkle is imparted by mental activity1 and the poetic dash that has the delightful audacity to personify such atomies4 ,the poetical is the flush on the face of things in the unconscious triumph of their purest life1 cognizable by being beheld at the moment when the higher faculties are at their fullest flood1 buoyed up on the joy of being and emotional sympathy4 ,the most and the highest of this joy is possessed by him whose imagination is most capable of being poetically agitated2 for by such agitation light is engendered within him1 whereby objects and sensations that before were dim and opaque grow luminous and pellucid1 like great statuary in twilight or moonlight1 standing vague and unvalued until a torch is waved over it4 ,when we begin to speak of poetry1 the higher qualities of the mind come up for judgment4 ,no genuine poet is without one or more of these1 and a great poet must have most of them4 ,thence the thought of the poet is pitched on a high key1 and even in poets of power the poetry of a page is sometimes shown merely by the sustained tone of the sentiment1 giving out no jets of fire1 having no passages salient with golden embossings4 ,through sympathy and sense of beauty1 the poet gets nearer to the absolute nature of things2 and thence1 with little of imagery1 or coloring1 or passion1 through this holy influence he becomes poetic1 depicting by re-creating the object or feeling or condition1 and rising naturally into rhythmic lines and sentences1 the best substance asking for1 and readily obtaining1 the most suitable form of words4 ,yet a poet of inward resources can seldom write a page without there being heard a note or bar or passage of the finer melody4 ,but men wanting this inward wealth1 that is1 wanting depth and breadth of emotional capacity1 have not1 whatever their other gifts1 the soil needed for highly imaginative poetry4 ,with broad emphasis this sthetic law is exemplified in the verse of ,voltaire1 especially in his dramas1 and in the verse of one who was deeper and higher than he as thinker and critic1 of ,lessing4 ,skillful versifiers1 by help of fancy and a certain plastic aptitude and laborious culture1 are enabled to give to smooth verse a flavor of poetry and to achieve a temporary reputation4 ,but of such uninspired workmanship the gilding after a while wears off1 the externally imparted perfume surely evaporates4 ,often the most suitable form of words is made of plainest1 commonest parts of speech1 and the fewest of them4 ,the more intense and deep the feeling1 the greater is the need of briefest1 simplest utterance4 ,when in one of those pauses of frantic wrath1--like the sudden rifts that momentarily let the calm stars through a whirling canopy of storm1--,lear utters imploringly that appeal to ,heaven1 the words are the familiar words of hourly use2 but what divine tenderness and what sweep of power in three lines6 ,o heavens1 ,if you do love old men1 if your sweet sway ,allow obedience1 if yourselves are old1 ,make it your cause2 send down and take my part6 ,the thirty-third canto of the ,inferno supremely exemplifies the sustaining energy of poetic imagination1 that by its sublimating light it can forever hold before the mind1 in tearful1 irresistible beauty1 one of the most woful forms of human suffering1 death by starvation4 ,in that terrific picture1 in front of which all the generations of men that come after ,dante are to weep purifying tears1 the most exquisite stroke is given in five monosyllables2 but in those five little words what depth of pathos1 what concentration of meaning6 ,on the fourth day one of ,ugolino's dying sons throws himself at his father's feet1 crying1-- ,father1 why dost not help me8 ,here let me remark that it is not by witnessing1 through poetically imaginative representation1 scenes of suffering and agony1 as in this case and the tragic drama1 that the sensibilities are purged1 according to the famous saying of ,aristotle2 but it is because such scenes are witnessed by the light of the beautiful4 ,the beautiful always purifies and exalts4 ,in either of these two passages any piling up of words1 any hyperbole of phrase1 or boldness or even grandeur of figurative speech1 would have proved a hindrance instead of a conductor to the feeling1 smothering and not facilitating expression4 ,but when1 turned out of doors in a wild night1 by those unnatural hags1 his daughters1 ,lear1 baring his brow to the storm1 invokes the thunder to ,strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world1 there is no tenderness1 no folding of the sore heart upon itself2 there is the expansion of defiance1 outburst of the mighty wrath of an outraged father and wronged and crownless king3 and so we have a gush of the grandest diction1 of the most tempestuous rhythm1 the storm in ,lear's mind marrying itself with a ghastly joy to the storm of the elements1 the sublime tumult above echoed in the crashing splendor of the verse3-- ,blow1 winds1 and crack your cheeks6 ,rage1 blow6 ,you cataracts and hurricanoes1 spout ,till you have drenched our steeples1 drowned the cocks6 ,you sulphurous and thought-executing fires1 ,vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving-thunderbolts1 ,singe my white head6 ,and thou1 all-shaking thunder1 ,strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world6 ,crack nature's moulds1 all germins spill at once1 ,that make ingrateful man6 ,i know of no other single passage that exhibits so clearly the colossal dimensions of ,shakespeare4 ,here is attained1 with almost unique effect1 what according to ,schiller is the aim of poetry1 no other than to give to humanity its fullest possible expression1 its most complete utterance4 ,the best poetry1 like the best music1 soars towards the upper light4 ,the genuinely poetical always lifts up the thought on the swell of emotion4 ,the thought moves free and strong because there is a deep1 bubbling head of feeling behind it4 ,feeling1 at its best1 has an ascending movement1 reaching up towards that high sphere where1 through their conjunction1 the earthly and the spiritual play in freedom in the sunshine of the beautiful4 ,the surest test of the presence of poetry is buoyancy1 springiness1 which comes from the union1 the divine union1 of the spiritual and the beautiful4 ,however weighty it may be with thought1 the poetical passage floats1 thus giving certain sign of life1 of a soul irrepressible4 ,but as in the forest there cannot be height of stem without strength and breadth of root1 the highest poetry is the most solid1 the firmest set in reality1 in truth4 ,the higher a poet is1 the closer hold he has of the roots of his subject4 ,he looks at it with a peering1 deeply sympathetic insight4 ,the roots1 in fact1 are in himself2 they are in the depths of his soul4 ,hence a cardinal question about a poem is1 ,how much of it does the poet draw out of himself8 ,is it his by projection from his inward resources1 by injection with his own juices2 or is it his only by adoption and adaptation1 by dress and adjustment8 ,flight of poetic imagination there cannot be unless the wings have been feathered in the heart4 ,loftiness or grandeur of imagination there cannot be1 except there be first innate richness and breadth of feeling4 ,imagination being simply the tensest action of intellect1 is ever1 like intellect in all its phases1 an instrument of feeling1 a mere tool4 ,height implies inward depth4 ,the gift to touch the vitals of a subject is the test-gift of literary faculty2 it is the soul-gift1 the gift of fuller1 livelier sympathy4 ,compare ,wordsworth with ,southey to learn the difference between inward and outward gifts4 ,poetry being in the mind1 the man who has little poetry within him will find little in nature or in the world or in ,shakespeare4 ,the man who has no music in his soul will hear none at the ,conservatoire in ,paris4 ,wordsworth sees with the inward eye1 ,southey too exclusively with the outward4 ,the true poet projects visions and rhythms out from his brain1 and gazes at and hearkens to them4 ,the degree of the truthfulness to nature and the vividness of these projections is the measure of his poetic genius and capacity4 ,only through this intense inwardness can he attain to great visions and rhythmic raptures1 and make you see and hear them4 ,what illimitable inward sight must ,keats have dwelt in ere1 to depict the effect on him of looking into ,chapman's ,homer1 he could write1-- ,then felt ,i like some watcher of the skies1 ,when a new planet swims into his ken2 ,or like stout ,cortez1 when with eagle eyes ,he stared at the ,pacific1 and all his men ,looked at each other with a wild surmise1 ,silent1 upon a peak in ,darien4 ,here is a brilliant example of poetic imagination1 the intellect urged to its finest action to satisfy the feeling which delights in the grand1 the select1 the beautiful4 ,silent1 upon a peak in ,darien4 ,what an outlook6 ,what a solemn1 mysterious1 elevating inward moment it creates in us6 ,to ascend to that peak1 to carry the reader thither with him1 that is the flight of a great poet1 of one who has been--as in that choice poem1 ,the ,prelude1 ,wordsworth1 with an electric stroke of poetic imagination1 says of ,newton-- ,voyaging through strange seas of thought1 alone4 ,this vigor of flight in the poet1 bearing on his wing the reader1 whom he ushers to new1 sudden vistas1 is a test of poetic genius4 ,some poets never carry you to heights1 but rather make you feel while reading them as if you were moving through shut-in valleys3 their verse wants sky4 ,they are not poetically imaginative1 are not strung for those leaps which the great poet at times finds it impossible not to make4 ,they have more poetic fancy than poetic imagination4 ,poetic fancy is a thin flame kindled deliberately with gathered materials2 poetic imagination is an intense flash born unexpectedly of internal collisions4 ,fancy is superficial and comparatively short-sighted2 imagination is penetrative and far-sighted1 bringing together things widely sundered1 apparently diverse and opposite4 ,fancy divides1 individualizes2 imagination compounds1 builds1 globes4 ,fancy is not so broad or so keen or so warm or so bounding as imagination2 is comparatively tame and cold and quiet4 ,imagination is synthetical4 ,large exhibitions of poetic imagination are rare even in the greatest poets4 ,at its best it strikes deep into the nature of things1 has a celestial quality which invests it with awe4 ,spenser shows great resources of fancy1 but little imagination4 ,the arc of imagination is in him too near its center4 ,hence there is no reach in his thoughts4 ,he has no exhaustless depths within4 ,he is not1 as ,coleridge says ,shakespeare is1 an example of endless self-reproduction4 ,cowley1 says the same great critic1 is a fanciful writer1 ,milton an imaginative poet4 ,as ,i have already said1 the power of imagining1 of forming in the mind images1 conceptions1 is a purely intellectual power1 and imagination becomes poetical only when this intellectual power is an agent obeying that emotional power which ardently seeks1 intensely longs for1 the better1 the more perfect1 the purer1 in one word1 the beautiful in each province of multiform life4 ,the willing agent1 intellect1 is sent out on excursions of discovery1 and unexpectedly falls in with and captures all kinds of sparkling booty4 ,writers weak in poetic imagination are not visited by those beaming thoughts that come unsummoned out of the invisible1 like new stars which1 out of the unfathomable deeps of the sky1 dart suddenly upon the vision of the heaven-watcher4 ,such writers deal with the known1 with the best commonplace1 not the common merely2 and under the glance of genius the common grows strange and profound4 ,some poets1 not weak in poetic imagination1 yet use it chiefly for secondary purposes1 that is1 for beautifying the dress1 the externals of poetry4 ,minds with some breadth but with little depth are not thoroughly original4 ,their sense of the beautiful busies itself necessarily with that for which they have the readiest gifts2 and their readiest gifts being words more than ideas1 versification more than thought1 form more than substance1 they turn out verse1 chiefly narrative1 which captivates through its easy flow1 its smooth sensuousness of diction1 its gloss4 ,take a poet so celebrated1 in some respects so admirable1 as ,tennyson4 ,tennyson's verse is apt to be too richly dressed1 too perfumed4 ,the clothing is costlier than the thoughts can pay for4 ,hence at every re-reading of him he parts with some of his strength1 so that after three or four repetitions he has little left for you4 ,from a similar cause this is the case too with ,byron1 through whose pen to common sentiment and opinion a glow is imparted by the animal heat of the man1 heightened by poetic tints from a keen sense of the beautiful4 ,but this is not the case with ,keats or ,shelley or ,coleridge or ,wordsworth1 and of course therefore not with ,milton or ,shakespeare4 ,all these keep fresh1 at every contact giving you strength and losing none4 ,as freely and freshly as the sun's beams through a transparent1 upspringing ,gothic spire1 intellect and feeling play1 ever undimmed1 through ,shelley's ,sky-,lark4 ,not so through ,tennyson's ,dream of ,fair ,women4 ,after a time these mellifluous stanzas droop1 and cling to the paper3 they have not enough flame-like motion4 ,the nicest word-choosing will not supply the place of choice in thought1 a choice prompted by fresh feeling2 nor1 where there is no new impulse from the heart1 will the most gorgeous diction give to a line the poetic carnation4 ,there can be no freshness of expression without freshness of thought2 the sparkle on the skin comes from new blood in the heart4 ,tennyson's poetry has often too much leaf and spray for the branches1 and too much branch for the trunk1 and too much trunk for the roots4 ,there is not living stock enough of thought deeply set in emotion to keep the leaves ever fresh and fragrant4 ,wordsworth's poetry has for the most part roots deeply hidden4 ,poetry is at times fitted to a subject too much like clothes to a body4 ,this is the method with even some writers of good gifts and deserved name4 ,compared with ,goethe1 who1 sensuous as he is1 but healthily sensuous1 writes always from within outward1 ,schiller is chargeable with this kind of externality4 ,to try to make the fancy do the work of feeling is a vain effort4 ,and so much verse is of the memory and fancy more than of the heart and imagination4 ,inward impulse not being dominant1 the words1 however shiny1 are touched with coldness4 ,under the inward dominance 7supposing always that the intellectual tool be of due temper and sharpness7 the poet mounts springily on a ladder self-wrought out of the brain as he ascends2 and thus there is a prompt continuity and progressiveness1 a forward and upward movement towards the climax which ever awaits you in a subject that has a poem in it4 ,in a genuine poem1 a work of inspiration and not mainly of art1 there is brisk evolution1 phase of feeling climbing over phase1 thought kindled by thought seizing unexpected links of association4 ,this gives sure note of the presence of the matrix out of which poetry molds itself1 that is1 sensibility warm and deep1 penetrating sympathy4 ,where evolution and upward movement are not1 it is a sign that the spring lacks depth and is too much fed by surface streams from without4 ,through a poem should run a thread of emotional thought1 strong enough to bind the parts together so vividly as to hold attention close to the substance4 ,many a so-called poem is but a string of elaborate stanzas1 mostly of four lines each1 too slightly connected to cooperate as members of an organic whole4 ,there is not heat enough in the originating impulse to fuse the parts into unity4 ,there is too much manufacture and not enough growth4 ,coleridge says1 ,the difference between manufactured poems and works of genius is not less than between an egg and an egg-shell2 yet at a distance they both look alike4 ,men without depth of sensibility or breadth of nature1 but with enough sense of beauty to modulate their thoughts1 using with skill the floating capital of sentiment and the current diction and molds of verse1 for a generation are esteemed poets of more genius than they have1 their pages being elaborate verse flavored with poetry1 rather than poems4 ,in much verse are found old thoughts re-dressed in the scoured garments of an ambitious fancy4 ,the remark being made to ,goethe in his latter days1 that scarce one of the younger ,german poets had given an example of good prose1 he rejoined1 ,that is very natural2 he who would write prose must have something to say2 but he who has nothing to say can make verses and rhymes2 for one word gives the other1 till at last you have before you what in fact is nothing1 yet looks as though it were something4 ,there is much good-looking verse which does not fulfill any one of ,milton's primary conditions for poetry1 being artificial instead of simple1 and having neither soul enough to be passionate1 nor body enough to be sensuous4 ,by passionate ,milton means imbued with feeling4 ,the poetical mood is always a visionary mood2 so much so1 that even when the poet is depicting an actual person or scene1 he must see it with the imaginative eye1 the inward eye1 as well as with the outward4 ,unless he does1 there is no poetry in the result4 ,a poem is twofold1 presenting an actuality1 and at the same time a tender lucent image thereof1 like the reflection of a castle1 standing on the edge of a lake1 in the calm deep mirror before it3 at one view we see the castle and its glistening counterpart4 ,in the best poetry there is vivid picture-making3 reality is made more visible by being presented as a beautiful show4 ,it is the power to present the beautiful show which constitutes the poet4 ,to conceive a scene or person with such liveliness and compactness as to be able to transfer the conception to paper with a distinctness and palpitation that shall make the reader behold in it a fresh and buoyant type of the actual--this implies a subtle1 creative life in the mind1 this is the test of poetic faculty4 ,to stand this test there must be an inward sea of thought and sensibility1 dipping into which the poet is enabled to hold up his conception or invention all adrip with sparkling freshness4 ,the poetic mind1 with a firm1 and at the same time free1 easy hold1 holds a subject at arm's length1 where it can be turned round in the light2 the prosaic mind grasps and hugs what it handles so close that there is no room for play of light or motion4 ,contemplating synthetically the highest and choicest and purest1 and at the same time actively endeavoring to embody it1 the genuine poet has in his best work joy as exalted as the mind can here attain to2 and in the reader who can attune himself to the high pitch1 he enkindles the same kind of joyful exaltation4 ,there is current a detestable phrase or definition1 which even ,coleridge allows himself to countenance1 namely1 that poetry is something which gives pleasure4 ,pleasure6 ,do we speak of the pleasure of beholding the sun rise out of the ,atlantic or from the top of ,mount ,washington1 or the pleasure of standing beside ,niagara1 or of reading about the self-sacrifice of ,regulus or ,winkelried8 ,pleasure is a word limited to the animal or to the lighter feelings4 ,let me have the pleasure of taking wine with you4 ,a good dinner gives great pleasure to a circle of gourmets4 ,even enjoyment1 a higher word than pleasure1 should1 when applied to poetry1 be conjoined with some elevating qualification2 for all the feelings impart enjoyment through their simple healthy function1 and there are people who enjoy a cock-pit1 or a bull-fight1 or an execution4 ,but poetry causes that refined1 super-sensuous delight which follows the apprehension of any thought1 sentiment1 act1 or scene1 which rises towards the best and purest possible in the range of that thought1 sentiment1 act1 or scene4 ,in the poetical there always is exaltation1 a reaching towards perfection1 a subtle1 blooming spirituality4 ,the end of poetry is not pleasure1--this were to speak too grossly1--but refined enjoyment through emotion4 ,to him who has the finer sensibility to become aware of its presence1 the poetical is everywhere4 ,the beautiful is a kiss which man gives to ,nature1 who returns it2 to get the kiss from her he must first give it4 ,wordsworth says1 ,poetry is the breath and fine spirit of all knowledge2 it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science4 ,it might be called the aromatic essence of all life4 ,a poem is the incarnation of this aroma1 the condensation of it into form4 ,a drop of dew symbolizes a poem2 for a true poem should be oval1 without angles1 transparent1 compact1 complete in itself1 graceful from inward quality and fullness4 ,it may be of a few lines1 or of hundreds or thousands2 but there must be no superfluous line or word4 ,a poem drops out of the brain a fragrant distillation4 ,a poem must be a spiritual whole2 that is1 not only with the parts organized into proportioned unity1 but with the whole and the parts springing out of the idea1 the sentiment1 form obedient to substance1 body to soul1 the sensuous life to the inward4 ,for enduring1 ruddy incarnation1 the subject1 whether it be incident1 scene1 sentiment1 or action1 must have within its core this essential aroma4 ,the poet 7and the test of his poetic capacity is his gift to draw the fragrance out of such a core7 keeps his conception distinctly and vividly before him4 ,the conception or ideal prefigurement of his theme precedes him1 like the pillar of fire in the night1 drawing him onward surely and rapidly4 ,otherwise he lags and flags and stumbles4 ,the spring into poetry is on a flash1 which not only lights up the thought on which it springs1 but renews1 recreates it4 ,a man's chief aim in life should be to better himself1 to keep bettering himself2 and in this high duty the poet helps him4 ,poetry is the great educator of the feelings4 ,by seizing and holding up to view the noblest and cleanest and best there is in human life1 poetry elevates and refines the feelings4 ,it reveals and strengthens the spirituality of our nature4 ,poetry tunes the mind4 ,faculty of admiration is one of our super-animal privileges4 ,poetry purges and guides admiration2 and the sounder and higher our admirations1 the more admirable ourselves become4 ,the best poetry turns the mind inward upon itself1 and sweetens its imaginations4 ,our imaginations1 that is1 our inward thoughts1 plans1 shaping our silent1 interior doings1 these are the chief part of us2 for out of these come most of our outward acts1 and all of their color4 ,as is the preponderance of the man1 will be this inward brood4 ,the timid man will imagine dangers1 the anxious man troubles1 the hopeful man successes1 the avaricious man accumulations1 the ambitious possession of power2 and the poetic man will imagine all sorts of perfections1 be ever yearning for a better and higher1 be ever building beautiful air-castles1 earthy or moral1 material or ethereal1 according as the sensuous or the spiritual predominates in his nature4 ,beckford1 of a sensuously poetic nature1 having command of vast wealth1 brought his castle in the air down to the ground1 and dazzled his contemporaries with ,fonthill ,abbey4 ,not only are ,fonthill ,abbeys and all beautiful buildings achieved through the warm action of the poetic faculty1 but all improvements are brought about by its virtue4 ,out of this deep1 inward1 creative power issue all theories and practice for the bettering of human conditions4 ,all original founders and discoverers are poets3 the most poetic ,french mind ,i know is that of ,fourier4 ,when a mind1 having the texture and expansibility to become surcharged with magnetic effluence1 has moreover that sthetic gift of rhythmic expression which involves a sense of the beautiful1 that is1 of the high and exquisite possibilities of created things1--when such a mind1 under the pressure of inward needs1 betakes it to embodying in verse its imaginations and conceptions1 the result is poetry4 ,poetry is thought so inly warmed by creative sensibility as to overflow in musical cadence4 ,and when we consider that thought is the gathering of loose intellectual activity into a fast focus2 that creative sensibility is human feeling refined of its dross1 stilled of its tumultuousness in the glow of the beautiful2 that musical cadence is heard by him who can hearken with such rapt reverence as to catch some sound of the tread in divine movement1 we may apprehend that a genuine poem implies1 for its conception1 an illuminated plenitude of mind1 and involves in its production a beatific visionariness4 ,,iii4 ,,style4 ,thought1 act1 and speech are of one substance4 ,where the best things have been done1 the best things have been said4 ,the history of ,attica is richer and more significant than that of her sister-states of old ,greece1 and among them her literature is supreme4 ,so of ,england in modern ,europe4 ,and where good thoughts have been uttered the form of those will be finest which carry the choicest life4 ,the tree gets its texture from the quality of its sap4 ,were ,i asked what author is the most profitable to the student of ,english on account of style1 ,i should answer1 study ,shakespeare4 ,have something to say1 and say it in the best and fewest words1 were a good recipe for style4 ,in this brief precept there are more ingredients than at first view appear4 ,to have something to say implies that a man must write out of himself1 and not chiefly out of his memory2 and so to write involves much more than many people are aware of2 in order that his style have freshness1 which is a primary need of a good style1 the writer's thought must be fresh4 ,then1 to say his thought in the best and fewest words implies faculty of choice in words1 and faculty of getting rid of all verbal superfluity2 and these two faculties betoken proficiencies and some of the finer sthetic forces4 ,style itself is a gift 7or more properly an issue of several gifts71 not an acquisition2 it cannot be taught4 ,as to teaching style to one with inharmonious or defective natural powers1 you might as well attempt to teach a thrush to sing the songs of the nightingale4 ,to be sure1 like the poetical1 or the scientific1 or any mental gift1 it requires culture4 ,but style is little helped from without4 ,the most1 as to the form of his utterance1 that a writer can get from others--whether through study of the best masters or through direct rhetorical instruction--is in the mechanical portion of the art2 that is1 how to put sentences together according to relation of clauses1 how by position of words and phrases to avoid obscurity and awkwardness1 and thus make most presentable and accessible what he has to give out4 ,even in these superficial lessons success imports something more than a superficial capacity4 ,these lessons learnt1 and you have still to go behind them for style1 whose cradle is within you4 ,le style c'est l'homme mme 7a man's style is his very self71 is the oft-quoted profound sentence of ,buffon4 ,style comes out of the interior3 beneath a genuinely good style are secret springs which give to the surface its movement and sparkle4 ,mostly when people talk of style 't is of the surface2 they think not of the depths beneath4 ,in popularly good styles there are indeed no deep or fine springs beneath2 in ,tom ,moore's1 for example1 or ,southey's4 ,nevertheless there are writers who have more skill and art than others in presenting agreeably what they have to say1 in gracefully shaping their utterances2 they are better endowed with some of the plastic faculties2 they have what ,sainte-,beuve calls the genius of style4 ,tact and craft enable them to make themselves more readable than some other writers of more substance2 still1 they are only capable of so doing by means of qualities which1 however secondary1 are interior and fervent1 and the skill imparted by which cannot be acquired except through the presence of these qualities4 ,this superiority of skill in form is illustrated by the literature of ,france in comparison with the literature of ,germany1 and even with that of ,england4 ,the ,french follow a precept thus embodied by ,branger3 ,perfection of style should be sought by all those who believe themselves called to diffuse useful thoughts4 ,style1 which is only the form appropriated to a subject by art and reflection1 is the passport of which every thought has need in order to circulate1 expand1 and lodge itself in people's brains4 ,to neglect style is not to show sufficient love for the ideas one wishes to make others adopt4 ,and so effective is the following of such a precept that1 through careful devices and manipulating cleverness1 a brilliant success1 though transitory is achieved by some writers who range lightly over surfaces1 their thoughts dipping no deeper than a flat stone thrown to skim along the water1 which it keeps ruffling1 making a momentary sprightly splash at each contact1 until1 its force being soon spent1 it disappears and is seen no more4 ,the possession of certain mental gifts constitutes a talent for writing1 gifts which1 with reference to the great primary powers of the mind1 are secondary4 ,sainte-,beuve says of the ,abb ,gerbet that he had naturally the flowers of speech1 movement and rhythm of phrase1 measure and choice of expression1 even figurative language1 what1 in short1 makes a talent for writing4 ,the possessor of these qualifications may1 nevertheless1 rise only a little above mediocrity4 ,of the styles of many1 even clever1 accomplished writers1 one gets a clear notion from the remark made of a certain polished actress1 that she always played well1 never better4 ,when ,sainte-,beuve says ,rien ne vit que par le style1 he asserts in fact the exclusive privilege of original thought to give permanence to literary work2 for nothing but an interior source can give life to expression4 ,the inward flow will shape itself adequately and harmoniously in proportion as it has at full command the auxiliary1 what ,i have called the plastic literary qualities2 but shape itself it will1 effectively and with living force1 without the fullest command1 while the readiest mastery over these qualities can never give vitality to style when are wanting primary resources4 ,literary substance which does not shape itself successfully 7it may not be with the fullest success7 is internally defective1 is insufficient2 for if it throb with life1 it will mold a form for its embodiment1 albeit that form1 from lack of complete command of the secondary agents1 will not be so graceful or rich as with such command it would have been4 ,wordsworth has made to ,english literature a permanent addition which is of the highest worth1 in spite of notable plastic deficiencies4 ,a conception that has a soul in it will find itself a body1 and if not a literary body1 one furnished by some other of the fine arts2 or1 wanting that1 in practical enterprise or invention4 ,and the body or form will be stamped with the inward lineaments of the man4 ,style issues from within1 and if it does not1 it is not style1 but manner4 ,words get all their force from the thoughts and feelings behind them4 ,they are necessary media1 created1 molded1 and combined by mental wants4 ,picking and polishing words and phrases is ineffectual without the picking and polishing of the thoughts3 below the surface of words lies that which controls and vivifies style4 ,and then between the substance1 the mental material1 and the executive faculties there must be lively harmony4 ,the executive power is a purely intellectual composite instrument2 the force that wields it is feeling4 ,for the best style the wielding force must be fine as well as rich and strong1 and the shaping1 harmonizing instrument of superfine temper and smiling willingness4 ,style1 in writing1 is the art of putting into words what you think or feel1 in such a way as to make the best of it--presupposed1 that what you think or feel is worth putting into printed words4 ,there are men who1 without being original or inventive1 have still1 through strong understanding and culture1 much to say that will profit their contemporaries2 men of a certain mental calibre1 of talent1 activity1 will1 cleverness1 of verbal facility and of prominent ambition and in most cases of audacity1 and who by discipline and labor attain to a style which for their purposes is effective4 ,of this class ,jeffrey1 ,brougham1 ,macaulay are conspicuous examples4 ,theirs are not winged minds4 ,they keep to the plane of commonplace2 they are never rapt into an upper sphere of thought1 where sentences grow transparent1 illuminated by soulful revelations4 ,all three lack subtlety1 the finer insight1 a penetrating perception4 ,the style of such men1 even when most vivacious1 is never marked by geniality1 by newness of turns1 by imaginative combinations1 by rhythmical sweeps1 and especially not by freshness1 of all which the fountain is originality1 genius1 creativeness4 ,it is related that after several of ,carlyle's papers had appeared in the ,edinburgh ,review1 ,brougham1 one of its founders and controllers1 protested that if that man were permitted to write any more he should cease to be a contributor4 ,and so the pages of the ,review were closed against the best writer it ever had4 ,this arbitrary proceeding of ,brougham is to be mainly accounted for as betraying the instinct of creeping talent in the presence of soaring genius4 ,not less than men of talent men of genius need to cultivate style2 nay1 from the copiousness and variousness of their material1 and from its very inwardness1 the molds into which it is to be thrown need the finest care4 ,coleridge1 rich and incomparable as he is1 would have made many of his prose pages still more effective by a studious supervision2 and ,de ,quincey tells us what labor his periods sometimes cost him4 ,the following advice1 given in a letter from ,maurice de ,gurin to his sister1 may be addressed to all literary aspirants3 ,form for yourself a style which shall be the expression of yourself4 ,study our ,french language by attentive reading1 making it your care to mark constructions1 turns of expression1 delicacies of style1 but without ever adopting the manner of any master4 ,in the works of these masters we must learn our language1 but we must use it each in our own fashion4 ,one of the first constituents of a good style is what ,coleridge calls progressive transition1 which implies a dynamic force1 a propulsive movement1 behind the pen4 ,hazlitt1 for example1 somewhat lacked this force1 and hence ,de ,quincey is justified to speak of his solitary flashes of thought1 his brilliancy1 seen chiefly in separate splinterings of phrase or image1 which throw upon the eye a vitreous scintillation for a moment4 ,one of the charms1 in a high sense1 of ,coleridge's page is that in him this dynamic force was present in liveliest action4 ,his intellect1 ever enkindled by his emotions1 exacted logical sequence1 and thus a rapid forward movement is overspread by a glow of generous feeling1 which1 being refined by his poetic sensibility made his style luminous and flowing4 ,de ,quincey1 treating of aphoristic writing1 says1 ,any man he of course means any man with good things in him as he walks through the streets may contrive to jot down an independent thought1 a short-hand memorandum of a great truth2 but the labor of composition begins when you have to put your separate threads of thought into a loom2 to weave them into a continuous whole2 to connect1 to introduce them2 to blow them out or expand them2 to carry them to a close4 ,buffon attached the greatest importance to sequence1 to close dependence1 to continuous enchainment4 ,he detested a chopped1 jerky style1 that into which the ,french are prone to fall4 ,certain it is1 and from obvious causes1 that much of the secret of style lies in aptness of sequence1 thought and word1 through an irresistible impulsion and pertinence1 leaping forth nimbly1 each taking its place promptly1 because naturally and necessarily4 ,through fusion and close coherency and dependence1 the flow is at once smooth and lively4 ,the grace as well as the strength of the living physical body depends much1 nay primarily1 on the joints4 ,so with the body of a good writer's thoughts1 that is1 his mode of utterance4 ,to the linking of sentences and paragraphs 7the links being self-wrought out of inward sap7 is due much of the buoyancy and force of style4 ,the springiness of the joints depends1 in the body1 on the quality of its nervous life2 in style1 much on the marrow and validity of the thoughts4 ,by a sprightly stream of thought1 fed from a full spring of feeling1 the current of words is kept lively and graceful4 ,words1 sentences1 paragraphs1 cannot be held closely1 symmetrically1 attractively together1 without the unction invisibly distilled from brisk mental movement1 movement starting from sentiment fresh and true4 ,soul is the source of style4 ,not sensibility alone is a prerequisite for style3 the sensibility must be active1 made active by the fine aspiring urgency which ever demands the best4 ,a good style will have the sheen communicated by lubrication from within1 not the gloss of outward rubbing4 ,that style varies in pitch and tone according to the subject treated ought to be self-evident4 ,in every page of ,the ,merry ,wives of ,windsor we recognize ,shakespeare not less palpably than in ,king ,lear4 ,in his ,recollections of ,charles ,lamb ,de ,quincey writes1 ,far be it from me to say one word in praise of those--people of how narrow a sensibility--who imagine that a simple 7that is1 according to many tastes1 an unelevated and unrhythmical7 style--take1 for instance1 an ,addisonian or a ,swiftian style--is unconditionally good4 ,not so3 all depends upon the subject2 and there is a style1 transcending these and all other modes of simplicity1 by infinite degrees1 and1 in the same proportion1 impossible to most men1 the rhythmical1 the continuous--what in ,french is called the soutenu--which1 to humbler styles stands in the relation of an organ to a shepherd's pipe4 ,this also finds its justification in its subject2 and the subject which can justify it must be of a corresponding quality--loftier--and therefore1 rare4 ,i quote ,de ,quincey because he has written more1 and more profoundly as well as more copiously1 on style than any writer ,i know4 ,to this point1--the adaption of style to subject1--he returns1 laying down with clearness and truth the law which should here govern4 ,in a paper on ,schlosser's ,literary ,history of the ,eighteenth ,century he reaffirms--what cannot be too strongly insisted on--the falsity of the common opinion that ,swift's style is1 for all writers1 a model of excellence1 showing how it is only fitted to the kind of subjects on which ,swift wrote1 and concluding with this characteristic passage3 ,that nearly all the blockheads with whom ,i have at any time had the pleasure of conversing upon the subject of style 7and pardon me for saying that men of the most sense are apt1 upon two subjects1 viz41 poetry and style1 to talk most like blockheads7 have invariably regarded ,swift's style not as if relatively1 7i4e41 given a proper subject71 but as if absolutely good--good unconditionally1 no matter what the subject4 ,now1 my friend1 suppose the case1 that the dean had been required to write a pendant for ,sir ,walter ,raleigh's immortal apostrophe to ,death1 or to many passages in ,sir ,thomas ,brown's ',religio ,medici' and his ',urn-,burial1' or to ,jeremy ,taylor's inaugural sections of his ',holy ,living and ,dying1' do you know what would have happened8 ,are you aware what sort of a ridiculous figure your poor bald ,jonathan would have cut8 ,about the same that would be cut by a forlorn scullion or waiter from a greasy eating-house at ,rotterdam1 if suddenly called away in vision to act as seneschal to the festival of ,belshazzar the king1 before a thousand of his lords4 ,that no writer of limited faculties can have a style of high excellence ought to be a truism4 ,through a certain equilibrium among his faculties1 and assiduous literary culture1 such a one may excel colleagues who move on the same bounded plane2 but that is all4 ,from the shallowest utterance1 where1 thoughts and feelings lying just below the surface1 there can be no strong lights and shadows1 no splendid play in the exposition1 styles range1 with the men who make them1 through all degrees of liveliness and significance and power1 up to that simple grandeur which conceals a vast volume of thought1 and implies a divine ruling of multiplicity4 ,in a good style1 on whatever degree it stands1 there must be a full marriage between word and thought1 so clean an adjustment of expression to material as to leave no rough edges or nodes4 ,the words must not be too big or too shiny for the thought2 they must not stand out from the texture1 embossing1 as it were1 the matter4 ,a style can hardly be too nervous2 it can be too muscular1 as1 for example1 was sometimes that of ,michael ,angelo in sculpture and painting4 ,a primary requisite for a good style is that the man and the writer be one2 that is1 that the man have a personal feeling for1 a free sympathy with1 the theme the writer has taken in hand2 his subject must be fitted to him1 and he to his subject4 ,that he be sincere is not enough2 he must be cordial2 then he will be magnetic1 attractive4 ,you must love your work to do it well4 ,a good style is a stream1 and a lively stream3 it flows ever onward actively4 ,the worst vice a style can have is languor4 ,with some writers a full stop is a double full stop3 the reader does not get forward4 ,much writing consists of little more than sluggish eddies4 ,in many minds there is not leap enough for a style4 ,excellence in style demands three vivacities1 and rather exacting ones1 for they involve a somewhat rare mental apportionment2 the vivacities of healthy and poetic feeling1 of intellectual nimbleness1 and of inviolable sequence4 ,writers there are who get to be partially self-enslaved by a routine of phrases and words under the repetition of which thought is hardened by its molds4 ,thence mechanical turns and forms1 which cause numbness1 even when there is a current of intellectual activity4 ,writers most liable to this subjection are they who have surrendered themselves to set opinions and systems1 who therefore cease to grow1--a sad condition for man or writer4 ,hypocrites in writing1 as in talking and doing1 end badly4 ,a writer who through his style aims to seem better or other than himself is soon found out4 ,the desire so to seem argues a literary incapacity2 it looks as though the very self--which will shine through the style--lacked confidence in its own substance4 ,and after all1 in writing as in doing and talking1 a man must be himself1 will be himself in spite of himself4 ,one cannot put on his neighbor's style any more than he can put on his neighbor's limbs4 ,not only has prose its melody as well as verse1 but there is no style unless sentences are pervaded1 ,i might say animated1 by rhythm2 lacking appropriate movement1 they are inelastic1 inert1 drowsy4 ,rhythm implies a soul behind it and in it4 ,the best style will have a certain rotundity imparted by the ceaseless rocking of thought in the deep ocean of sentiment4 ,without some music in them sentences were torpid1 impracticable4 ,to put thoughts and words so together that there shall be a charm in the presentation of them1 there needs a lively harmony among certain faculties1 a rhythm in the mind4 ,hence ,cicero said that to write prose well1 one must be able to write verse4 ,the utterance of music in song or tune1 in artful melody or choral harmony1 is but the consummation of a power which is ever a sweetener in life's healthily active exhibitions1 the power of sound4 ,nature is alive with music4 ,in the fields1 in the air1 sound is a token of life4 ,on high1 bare1 or snow-covered mountains the sense of oppression comes in great part from the absence of sound4 ,but stand in spring under a broad1 sapful ,norway maple1 leafless as yet1 its every twig and spray clad in tender green flowerets1 and listen to the musical murmur of bees above you1 full of life and promise1 a heavenly harmony from unseen choristers4 ,here is a symbol of the creative energy1 unceasing1 unseen1 and ever rhythmical4 ,the heartier and deeper the thought1 the more melody will there be in its fit expression1 and thence the higher range of style is only reached by poets1 or by men who1 though poetically minded1 yet lack the accomplishment of verse4 ,the sudden electric injection of light into a thought or object or sentiment--in this consists the gift poetical1 a gift which implies a sensibility so keen and select as to kindle the light1 and an intellect fine and firm enough to hold and transmit it4 ,a writer in whom there is no poetic feeling can hardly rise to a style4 ,whoever has tried to read a play of ,scribe will understand from this why ,sainte-,beuve affirms of him that he is utterly devoid of the faculty of style 7dnu de la facult du style74 ,contrast with ,scribe his fellow-countryman1 the great ,molire4 ,thence1 ,joubert says1 ,many of our poets having written in prose1 ordinary style has received from them a brilliancy and audacities which it would not have had without them4 ,perhaps1 too1 some prose writers1 who were born poets without being born versifiers1 have contributed to adorn our language1 even in its familiarities1 with those riches and that pomp which until then had been the exclusive property of the poetic idiom4 ,a man of poetic sensibility is one born with a sleepless eye to the better1 an ear that craves the musical1 a soul that is uneasy in presence of the defective or the incomplete4 ,this endowment implies a mind not only susceptible of the higher and finer movements of thought1 but which eagerly demands them1 and which thus makes the writer exacting towards himself4 ,hence only he attains to a genuine correctness2 he was correct by instinct before he was so by discipline4 ,in the whole as well as the parts he requires finish and proportion4 ,within him there is a momentum which fills out his thought and its worded envelope to warm convexity4 ,only he has the fine tact and discernment to know the full meaning of each word he uses4 ,the best style is organic in its details as well as its structure2 it shows modeling1 a handling of words and phrases with the pliancy and plastic effects of clay in the hands of the sculptor4 ,goethe says that only poets and artists have method1 because they require to see a thing before them in a completed1 rounded form4 ,writing is a fine art1 and one of the finest2 and he who would be a master in this art must unite genial gifts with conscientious culture4 ,of style the highest examples1 therefore1 are to be found in the verse of the great poets1 of the deep rhythmic souls who make a sure1 agile intellect their willing ,ariel2 and no prose writer gets to be a master in style but through kindred endowment4 ,the compact1 symmetrical combination of gifts and acquirements1 of genius with talent1 demanded for the putting forth of a fresh1 priceless poem1 this he need not have2 but his perceptions must be brightened by the light whose fountain is the inward enjoyment of the more perfect in form1 deed1 and sentiment1 and his best thoughts suffused with that fragrance whose only source is the ravishment of the beautiful4 ,,iv4 ,,dante ,,and ,,his ,,latest ,,translators4#e #e ,putnam's ,magazine1 #ahfh4 ,ghosts and witches are the best machinery for a modern epic4 ,so said ,charles ,fox1 who fed his imagination on verse of this aspiring class4 ,fox was no literary oracle1 and his opinion is here cited only as evidence that the superearthly is an acknowledged element in the epopee4 ,the term machinery implies ignorance of the import of the super-earthly in epic poetry1 an ignorance attendant on materialism and a virtual unbelief4 ,no poet who should accept the term could write an epic1 with or without the machinery4 ,such acceptance would betoken that weakness of the poetic pinion which surely follows a want of faith in the invisible supervisive energies4 ,a genuine epic1 of the first class1 is a world-poem1 a poem of depth and height and breadth1 narrating long-prepared ruin or foundation of a race2 and poetry1 soaring beyond history1 is bold to lay bare the method of the divine intervention in the momentous work4 ,the epic poet1 worthy of the lofty task1 has such large sympathies1 together with such consciousness of power1 that he takes on him to interpret and incarnate the celestial cooperation4 ,there are people1 and some of them even poets1 whose consciousness is so smothered behind the senses1 that they come short of belief in spiritual potency4 ,they are what1 with felicity of phrase1 ,mr4 ,matthew ,arnold calls-- ,light half-believers in our casual creeds4 ,homer and ,milton were believers3 they believed in the visible1 active presence on the earth of the god ,mars1 and the archangel ,raphael4 ,had they not1 there would have been no ,iliad1 no ,paradise ,lost4 ,dante1 too1 was a believer2 and such warm1 wide sympathies had he1 and an imagination so daring1 that he undertook to unfold the divine judgment on the multitudinous dead1 ranging with inspired vision through hell1 and purgatory1 and heaven4 ,in his large1 hot heart1 he lodged the racy1 crude beliefs of his age1 and with poetic pen wrought them into immortal shapes4 ,the then religious imaginations of ,christendom1 positive1 and gross1 and very vivid2 the politics of ,italy1 then tumultuous and embittered2 the theology and philosophy of his time1 fantastic1 unfashioned--all this was his material4 ,but all this1 and were it ten times as much1 is but the skeleton1 the frame4 ,the true material of a poem is the poet's own nature and thoughts1 his sentiment and his2 judgment1 his opinions1 aspirations1 imaginations1 his veriest self1 the whole of him1 especially the best of him4 ,than imaginary journeys through the realms beyond the grave1 which were so much the vogue with the religious writers of the day1--and literature then was chiefly1 almost exclusively1 religious1--no more broad or tempting canvas could be offered to a poet1 beset1 as all poets are apt to be1 with the need of utterance1 and possessed1 moreover1 of a graphic genius that craved strong1 glowing themes for its play4 ,the present teeming world to be transfigured into the world to come1 and the solicitation and temptation to do this brought to a manly1 powerful nature1 passionate1 creative1 descriptive1 to a stirring realist1 into whose breast1 as a chief actor on the ,italian scene1 ran1 all warm from the wheels of their spinning1 the threads of ,italian politics at the culmination of the papal imperial conflict2 and that breast throbbing with the fiery passions of republican ,italy1 while behind the throb beat the measure of a poetic soul impelled to tune the wide1 variegated cacophony4 ,proud1 passionate1 and baffled1 the man ,dante deeply swayed the poet4 ,much of his verse is directly woven out of his indignations and burning personal griefs4 ,at times1 contemporaneous history tyrannized over him4 ,dante's high and various gifts1 his supreme poetic gift1 the noble character and warm individuality of the man1 with the pathos of his personal story1 the full1 lively transcript he hands down of the theology and philosophy of his age1 his native literary force as molder of the ,italian language1 his being the bold1 adventurous initiator1 the august father of modern poetry--all this has combined to keep him and his verse fresh in the minds of men through six centuries4 ,but even all this would not have made him one of the three or four world-poets1 would not have won for him the wreath of universal ,european translation4 ,what gave his rare qualities their most advantageous field1 not merely for the display of their peculiar superiorities1 but for keeping their fruit sound and sweet1 was that he is the historian of hell1 purgatory1 and heaven--of the world to come such as it was pictured in his day1 and as it has been pictured more or less ever since--the word-painter of that visionary1 awful hereafter1 the thought of which has ever been a spell4 ,those imaginations as to future being--to the ,middle ,ages so vivid as to become soul-realities--,dante1 with his transcendent pictorial mastership1 clothed in words fresh and weighty from the mine of popular speech1 stamping them with his glittering imperial superscription4 ,imaginations6 there are imaginations of the future1 the reverse of poetical4 ,hunger will give you tormenting imaginations of breakfasts and dinners2 avarice enlivens some minds with pictures of gains that are to be4 ,but imaginations of the life beyond the grave1 these we cannot entertain without spirituality4 ,the having them with any urgency and persistence implies strong spiritual prepossessions3 men must be self-possessed with their higher self1 with their spirit4 ,the very attempt to figure your disembodied state is an attempt poetical4 ,to succeed with any distinctness denotes some power of creative projection3 without wings1 this domain cannot be entered4 ,in ,dante's time these attempts were common4 ,through his preminent qualifications1 crowned with the poetic faculty1 the faculty of sympathy with ideal excellence1 his attempt was a great1 a unique success4 ,to accompany ,dante through his vast triple trans-terrestrial world1 would seem to demand in the reader a sustained effort of imagination4 ,but ,dante is so graphic1 and1 we might add1 corporeal in his pictures1 puts such a pulse into his figures1 that the artistic illusion wherewith we set out is exchanged for1 or rather overborne by1 an illusion of the reality of what is represented4 ,yet from the opening of the first canto he is ever in the super-earthly world1 and every line of the fourteen thousand has the benefit of a super-earthly1 that is1 a poetic atmosphere1 which lightens it1 transfigures it1 floats it4 ,one reads with the poetic prestige of the knowledge that every scene is trans-terrestrial2 and1 at the same time1 every scene is presented with a physical realism1 a visual and audible vividness1 which captivates and holds the perceptive faculty2 so that the reader finds himself grasped1 as it were1 in a vice1 whose double handle is mortised on one side in the senses1 and on the other in the spiritual imagination4 ,dante had it in him1--this hell1 purgatory1 and heaven--so full and warm and large was his nature4 ,within his own breast he had felt1 with the keen intensity of the poetic temperament1 the loves and hates1 the griefs and delights of life4 ,through his wealth of heart he had a fellow-feeling for all the joys and sorrows of his brother-men1 and1 added to this1 an artist's will and want to reproduce them1 and to reproduce them a clear1 outwelling1 intellectual vivacity4 ,he need scarcely have told us that his poem1 though treating of spirits1 relates to the passions and doings of men in the flesh4 ,he chose a theme that at once seized the attention of his readers1 and gave to himself a boundless scope4 ,his field was all past history1 around the altitudes of which are clustered biographical traits and sketches of famous sinners and famous saints1 of heroes and lofty criminals2 and1 along with this1 contemporaneous ,florentine and ,italian history1 with its tumults and vicissitudes1 its biographies and personalities1 its wraths and triumphs4 ,dante exhibits great fertility in situations and conjunctions2 but1 besides that many of them were ready to his hand1 this kind of inventiveness denotes of itself no fine creative faculty4 ,it is the necessary equipment of the voluminous novelist4 ,in this facility and abundance ,goldsmith could not have coped with ,james and ,bulwer2 and yet the ,vicar of ,wakefield 7not to go so high as ,tristram ,shandy and ,don ,quixote7 is worth all their hundred volumes of tales put together4 ,what insight1 what weight1 and faithfulness1 and refinement1 and breadth1 and truth1 and elevation of character and conception1 does the framework of incident support and display8 ,that is the sthetic question4 ,the novels of every day bristle with this material inventiveness1 this small1 abounding1 tangled underwood of event and sensation1 which yields no timber and wherein birds will not build4 ,the invention exhibited in the punishments and tortures and conditions of the ,inferno and ,purgatorio and ,paradiso1 is not admirable for their mere exuberance and diversity1--for that might have come from a comparatively prosaic mind1 especially when fed1 as all minds then were1 with the passionate mediaeval beliefs1--but for the heart there is in them1 throbbing deeply in some1 and for the human sympathy1 and thence1 in part1 the photographic fidelity1 and for the paramount gift poetically to portray4 ,a consequence of the choice of subject1 and1 as regards the epic quality of ,dante's poem1 an important consequence1 is that there is in it no unity of interest4 ,the sympathies of the reader are not engrossed by one great group of characters1 acting and reacting on one another through the whole sweep of the invention4 ,instead of this1 we have a long series of unconnected pictures1 each one awakening a new interest4 ,hereby the mind is distracted1 the attention being transferred at every hundred lines to a fresh figure or group4 ,we pass through a gallery of pictures and portraits1 classed1 to be sure1 by subjects1 but distinct one from the other1 and separated by the projection of as many different frames4 ,we are on a weird1 adventurous journey1 and make but brief stops1 however attractive the strangers or acquaintance we meet4 ,we go from person to person1 from scene to scene2 so that at the end of the journey1 although the perception has been richly crowded1 one impression has effaced the other4 ,not carrying the weight1 not pulsating in its every limb with the power of a broad1 deep1 involved story1 architecturally reared on one foundation1 whose parts are all subordinated to a great unity1 the ,divina ,commedia1 as an organic1 artistic whole1 is inferior to the ,iliad and ,paradise ,lost1 and to the ,grecian and ,shakespearean tragedies4 ,the exclusive super-earthliness of his scenes and personages1 and1 with this1 his delight in picture-drawing1 keep ,dante close to his page--fastened to it1 we might say1 by a twofold fascination4 ,among the many faculties that equip him for his extraordinary task1 most active is that of form4 ,goethe says of him1 ,the great intellectual and moral qualities of ,dante being universally acknowledged1 we shall be furthered in a right estimate of his works1 if we keep in view that just in his life-time--,giotto being his contemporary--was the re-birth of plastic art in all its natural strength4 ,by this sensuous1 form-loving spirit of the age1 working so widely and deeply1 ,dante1 too1 was largely swayed4 ,with the eye of his imagination he seized objects so distinctly that he could reproduce them in sharp outline4 ,thence we see before us the most abstruse and unusual1 drawn1 as it were1 after nature4 ,in recognition of the same characteristic1 ,coleridge says1 ,in picturesqueness ,dante is beyond all other poets1 ancient or modern1 and more in the stern style of ,pindar than of any other4 ,michael ,angelo is said to have made a design for every page of the ',divina ,commedia4' ,dante1 eminent in poetic gifts1 has many sides1 but this is his strongest side3 he is preminently a poet of form4 ,in his mind and in his work there is a southern1 an ,italian1 sensuousness4 ,he is a poet of thought1 but more a poet of molds2 he is a poet of sentiment1 but more a poet of pictures4 ,rising readily to generalization1 still his intellect is more specific than generic4 ,his subject--chosen by the concurrence of his sthetic1 moral1 and intellectual needs--admits of1 nay1 demands portraits1 isolated sketches1 unconnected delineations4 ,the personages of his poem are independent one of the other1 and are thence the more easily drawn4 ,nor does ,dante abound in transferable passages1 sentences of universal application1 from being saturated with the perfumed essence of humanity4 ,we say it with diffidence1 but to us it seems that there is a further poetic glance1 more idealized fidelity1 in ,milton2 more significance and wisdom and profound hint in ,goethe4 ,in ,milton the mental reverberation is wider3 he rivets us through distant grand association1 by great suggestion4 ,thus1 describing the darkened head of ,satan1 ,milton says1-- ,as when the sun new risen ,looks through the horizontal misty air1 ,shorn of his beams1 or from behind the moon1 ,in dim eclipse1 disastrous twilight sheds ,on half the nations1 ,setting aside the epithets horizontal and disastrous1 which are poetically imaginative1 the likening of ,satan to the sun seen through a mist1 or in eclipse1 is a direct1 parallel comparison that aids us to see ,satan2 and it is in such1 immediate1 not mediate1--not involving likeness between physical and mental qualities1 but merely between physical1 not between subtle1 relations1--that ,dante chiefly deals1 showing imaginative fertility1 helpful1 needful to the poet1 but different from1 and altogether inferior to1 poetic imagination4 ,the mind attains to the height of poetic imagination when the intellect1 urged by the purer sensibilities in alliance with aspiration for the perfect1 exerts its imaginative power to the utmost1 and1 as the result of this exertion1 discovers a thought or image which1 from its originality1 fitness1 and beauty1 gives to the reader a new delight4 ,of this1 the lordliest mental exhibition1 there is a sovereign example in the words wherewith ,milton concludes the passage-- and with fear of change ,perplexes monarchs4 ,this fills the mind with the terror he wishes his ,satan to inspire2 this gives its greatness to the passage4 ,dante1 by the distinctness of his outline1 addresses himself more to the reader's senses and perception2 ,milton rouses his higher imaginative capacity4 ,in the whole ,inferno1 is there a sentence so aglow as this line and a half of ,paradise ,lost8 ,and the torrid clime ,smote on him sore besides1 vaulted with fire4 ,or is there in ,dante any sound so loud and terrible as that shout of ,milton's demon-host-- ,that tore ,hell's concave1 and beyond ,frighted the reign of ,chaos and old ,night8 ,here the unity of his theme stands ,milton in stead for grandeur and breadth4 ,dante is copious in similes4 ,such copiousness by no means proves poetic genius2 and a superior poet may have less command of similes than one inferior to him4 ,wordsworth has much less of this command than ,moore4 ,but when a poet does use similes1 he will be likely often to put of his best into them1 for they are captivating instruments and facilities for poetic expansion4 ,when a poet is in warm sympathy with the divine doings1 there will be at times a flashing fitness in his similitudes1 which are then the sudden offspring of finest intuition4 ,in citing some of the most prominent in the ,divina ,commedia1 we at once give brief samples of ,dante and of the craft of his three latest translators1 using the version of ,dr4 ,parsons for extracts from the ,inferno1 that of ,mr4 ,dayman for those from the ,purgatorio1 and that of ,mr4 ,longfellow for those from the ,paradiso4 ,as well-filled sails1 which in the tempest swell1 ,drop1 with folds flapping1 if the mast be rent2 ,so to the earth that cruel monster fell1 ,and straightway down to ,hell's ,fourth ,pit he went4 ,inferno3 ,canto ,,vii4 ,swept now amain those turbid waters o'er ,a tumult of a dread portentous kind1 ,which rocked with sudden spasms each trembling shore1 ,like the mad rushing of a rapid wind2 ,as when1 made furious by opposing heats1 ,wild through the wood the unbridled tempest scours1 ,dusty and proud1 the cringing forest beats1 ,and scatters far the broken limbs and flowers2 ,then fly the herds1--the swains to shelter scud4 ,freeing mine eyes1 ',thy sight1' he said1 'direct ,o'er the long-standing scum of yonder flood1 ,where1 most condense1 its acrid streams collect4' ,inferno3 ,canto ,,ix4 ,when1 lo6 there met us1 close beside our track1 ,a troop of spirits4 ,each amid the band ,eyed us1 as men at eve a passer-by ',neath a new moon2 as closely us they scanned1 ,as an old tailor doth a needle's eye4 ,inferno3 ,canto ,,xv4 ,and just as frogs that stand1 with noses out ,on a pool's margin1 but beneath it hide ,their feet and all their bodies but the snout1 ,so stood the sinners there on every side4 ,inferno3 ,canto ,,xxii4 ,a cooper's vessel1 that by chance hath been ,either of middle-piece or cant-piece reft1 ,gapes not so wide as one that from his chin ,i noticed lengthwise through his carcass cleft4 ,inferno3 ,canto ,,xxviii4 ,we tarried yet the ocean's brink upon1 ,like unto people musing of their way1 ,whose body lingers when the heart hath gone2 ,and lo6 as near the dawning of the day1 ,down in the west1 upon the watery floor1 ,the vapor-fogs do ,mars in red array1 ,even such appeared to me a light that o'er ,the sea so quickly came1 no wing could match ,its moving4 ,be that vision mine once more4 ,purgatorio3 ,canto ,,ii4 ,and thou1 remembering well1 with eye that sees ,the light1 wilt know thee like the sickly one ,that on her bed of down can find no ease1 ,but turns and turns again her ache to shun1 ,purgatorio3 ,canto ,,vi4 ',t was now the hour the longing heart that bends ,in voyagers1 and meltingly doth sway1 ,who bade farewell at morn to gentle friends2 ,and wounds the pilgrim newly bound his way ,with poignant love1 to hear some distant bell ,that seems to mourn the dying of the day2 ,when ,i began to slight the sounds that fell ,upon my ear1 one risen soul to view1 ,whose beckoning hand our audience would compel4 ,purgatorio3 ,canto ,,viii4 ,there ,i the shades see hurrying up to kiss ,each with his mate from every part1 nor stay1 ,contenting them with momentary bliss4 ,so one with other1 all their swart array ,along1 do ants encounter snout with snout1 ,so haply probe their fortune and their way4 ,purgatorio3 ,canto ,,xxvi4 ,between two viands1 equally removed ,and tempting1 a free man would die of hunger ,ere either he could bring unto his teeth4 ,so would a lamb between the ravenings ,of two fierce wolves stand fearing both alike2 ,and so would stand a dog between two does4 ,hence1 if ,i held my peace1 myself ,i blame not1 ,impelled in equal measure by my doubts1 ,since it must be so1 nor do ,i commend4 ,paradiso3 ,canto ,,iv4 ,and as a lute and harp1 accordant strung ,with many strings1 a dulcet tinkling make ,to him by whom the notes are not distinguished1 ,so from the lights that there to me appeared ,upgathered through the cross a melody1 ,which rapt me1 not distinguishing the hymn4 ,paradiso3 ,canto ,,xiv4 ,as through the pure and tranquil evening air ,there shoots from time to time a sudden fire1 ,moving the eyes that steadfast were before1 ,and seems to be a star that changeth place1 ,except that in the part where it is kindled ,nothing is missed1 and this endureth little2 ,so from the horn that to the right extends ,unto that cross's foot there ran a star ,out of the constellation shining there4 ,paradiso3 ,canto ,,xv4 ,even as remaineth splendid and serene ,the hemisphere of air1 when ,boreas ,is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest1 ,because is purified and resolved the rack ,that erst disturbed it1 till the welkin laughs ,with all the beauties of its pageantry2 ,thus did ,i likewise1 after that my lady ,had me provided with a clear response1 ,and like a star in ,heaven the truth was seen4 ,paradiso3 ,canto ,,xxviii4 ,the first question to ask in regard to a simile found in verse is1 ,is it poetical8 ,is there1 as effect of its introduction1 any heightening of the reader's mood1 any cleansing of his vision1 any clarification of the medium through which he is looking8 ,is there a sudden play of light that warms1 and1 through this warmth1 illuminates the object before him8 ,few of those just quoted1 put to such test1 could be called more than conventionally poetical--if this be not a solecism4 ,to illustrate one sensuous object by another does not animate the mind enough to fulfill any one of the above conditions4 ,such similitudes issuing from intellectual liveliness1 there is through them no steeping of intellectual perception in emotion4 ,they may help to make the object ocularly more apparent1 but they do not make the feeling a party to the movement4 ,when this is done1--as in the examples from ,canto ,,xv4 of the ,inferno1 and ,canto ,,viii4 of the ,purgatorio1--what an instantaneous vivification of the picture6 ,but in the best of them the poetic gleam is not so unlooked-for bright as in the best of ,shakespeare's4 ,as one instance out of many3 towards the end of the great soliloquy of ,henry ,v41 after enumerating the emblems and accompaniments of royalty1 the king continues1-- ,no1 not all these1 thrice-gorgeous ceremony1 ,not all these1 laid in bed majestical1 ,can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave2 ,who1 with a body filled1 and vacant mind1 ,gets him to rest1 crammed with distressful bread2 ,never sees horrid night1 the child of hell2 ,but1 like a lackey1 from the rise to set1 ,sweats in the eye of ,phoebus1 and all night ,sleeps in ,elysium2 next day1 after dawn1 ,doth rise and help ,hyperion to his horse ,what a sudden filling of the earth with light through that image1 so fresh and unexpected1 of the rising sun1 with its suggestion of beauty and healthfulness6 ,then the far-reaching1 transfiguring imagination1 that1 in a twinkle1 transmutes into the squire of ,hyperion a stolid rustic1 making him suddenly radiant with the glory of morning4 ,it is by this union of unexpectedness with fitness1 of solidity with brilliancy1 of remoteness with instantaneous presence1 in his figures1 denoting overflow of resources1 a divine plenitude1 so that we feel after ,shakespeare has said his best things1 that he could go on saying more and better1--it is especially by this lustrous1 ever-teeming fullness of life1 this creative readiness1 that ,shakespeare throws a farther and whiter and a broader light than ,dante4 ,nor does ,dante's page glisten1 as ,shakespeare's so often does1 with metaphor1 or compressed similes1 that at times with a word open the spiritual sphere2 not super-imposed as cold ornament1 but inter-tissued with the web of thought1 upflashings from a deep sea of mind1 to quiver on the surface1 as on the calm level of the ,atlantic you may see a circuit of shining ripple1 caused by schools of fish that have come up from the wealth in the depths below to help the sun to glisten1--a sign of life1 power1 and abundance4 ,like his great compeer1 ,milton1 ,dante fails of universality from want of humor4 ,neither had any fun in him4 ,this was the only fault 7liberally to interpret ,can's conduct7 that ,dante's host1 ,can ,grande of ,verona1 had to find with him4 ,the subjects of both poets 7unconsciously chosen perhaps from this very defect of humor7 were predominantly religious1 and their theology1 which was that of their times1 was crude and cruel4 ,the deep1 sympathetic earnestness1 which is the basis of the best humor1 they had1 but1 to use an illustration of ,richter1 they could not turn sublimity upside down1--a great feat1 only possible through sense of the comic1 which1 in its highest manifestation of humor1 pillows pain in the lap of absurdity1 throws such rays upon affliction as to make a grin to glimmer through gloom1 and1 with the fool in ,lear1 forces you1 like a child1 to smile through warmest tears of sympathy4 ,humor imparts breadth and buoyancy to tolerance1 enabling it to dandle lovingly the faults and follies of men2 through humor the spiritual is calm and clear enough to sport with and toss the sensual2 it is a compassionate1 tearful delight2 in its finest mood1 an angelic laughter4 ,of pathos ,dante has given examples unsurpassed in literature4 ,by the story of ,ugolino the chords of the heart are so thrilled that pity and awe possess us wholly2 and by that of ,francesca they are touched to tenderest sympathy4 ,but ,ugolino is to ,lear what a single fire-freighted cloud that discharges five or six terrific strokes is to a night-long tempest1 wherein the thundering heavens gape with a hundred flashes4 ,all the personages of ,dante's poem 7unless we regard himself as one7 are spirits4 ,shakespeare1 throughout his many works1 gives only a few glimpses into the world beyond the grave2 but how grandly by these few is the imagination expanded4 ,clarence's dream1 lengthened after life1 in which he passes the melancholy flood1 is almost super-,dantesque1 concentrating in a few ejaculative lines a fearful foretaste of trans-earthly torment for a bad life on earth4 ,and the great ghost in ,hamlet1 when you read of him1 how shadowy real6 ,dante's representation of disembodied humanity is too pagan1 too palpable1 not ghostly enough1 not spiritualized with hope and awe4 ,profound1 awakening1 far-stretching1 much enfolding1 thought-breeding thoughts1 that can only grow in the soil of pure1 large sensibilities1 and by them are cast up in the heave and glow of inward motion1 to be wrought by intellect and shaped in the light of the beautiful1--of these1 which are the test of poetic greatness1 ,dante1 if we may venture to say so1 has not more or brighter examples than ,milton1 and not so many as ,goethe2 while of such passages1 compactly embodying as they do the finer insights of a poetic mind1 there are more in a single one of the greater tragedies of ,shakespeare1 than in all the three books of the ,divina ,commedia4 ,juxtaposition beside ,shakespeare1 even if it bring out the superiorities of the ,english bard1 is the highest honor paid to any other great poet4 ,glory enough is it if admiration can lift ,dante so high as to take him into the same look that beholds ,shakespeare2 what though the summit of the mighty ,englishman shine alone in the sky1 and the taller giant carry up towards heaven a larger bulk and more varied domains4 ,the traveler1 even if he come directly from wondering at ,mont ,blanc in its sublime presence1 will yet stand with earnest delight before the majesty of the ,yungfrau and the ,eigher4 ,but it is time to speak of ,dante in ,english4 ,it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible1 that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor1 as to seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet4 ,thus writes a great poet1 ,shelley1 in his beautiful ,defense of ,poetry4 ,but have we not in modern tongues the creations of ,homer1 and of ,plato1 who ,shelley1 on the same page1 says is essentially a poet8 ,and can we estimate the loss the modern mind would suffer by deprivation of them in translated form8 ,pope's ,homer--still ,homer though so ,popish--has been a not insignificant chapter in the culture of thousands1 who without it would have known no more of ,hector and ,achilles and the golden glowing cloud of passion and action through which they are seen superbly shining1 than what a few of them would incidently have learnt from ,lempriere4 ,lord ,derby's ,iliad has gone through many editions already4 ,and ,job and the ,psalms3 what should we have done without them in ,english8 ,translations are the telegraphic conductors that bring us great messages from those in other lands and times1 whose souls were so rich and deep that from their words their fellow-men1 in all parts of the globe1 draw truth and wisdom forever4 ,the flash on which the message was first launched has lost some of its vividness by the way2 but the purport of the message we have distinctly1 and the joy or grief wherewith it is freighted1 and even much of its beauty4 ,shall we not eat oranges1 because on being translated from ,cuba to our palates they have lost somewhat of their flavor8 ,in reading a translated poem we wish to have as much of the essence of the original1 that is1 as much of the poetry1 as possible4 ,a poem it is we sit down to read1 not a relation of facts1 or an historical or critical or philosophical or theological exposition1--a poem1 only in another dress4 ,thence a work in verse1 that has poetic quality enough to be worth translating1 must be made to lose by the process as little as may be of its worth2 and its worth every poem owes entirely to its poetic quality and the degree of that4 ,a prose translation of a poem is an sthetic impertinence1 ,shakespeare was at first opened to the people of the ,continent in prose1 because there was not then culture enough to reproduce him in verse4 ,and in ,shakespeare there is so much practical sense1 so much telling comment on life1 so much wit1 such animal spirits1 such touching stories so well told1 that the great gain of having him even in prose concealed the loss sustained by the absence of rhythmic sound1 and by the discoloration 7impallidation1 we should say1 were the word already there7 of hundreds of liveliest tinted flowers1 the deflowering of many delicate stems4 ,forty years ago1 ,mr4 ,hay ward translated the ,faust of ,goethe into prose2 but let any one compare the ,hymn of the ,archangels and other of the more highly-wrought passages1 as rendered by him1 with any of the better translations in verse1--with that of ,mr4 ,brooks for example1--to perceive at once the insufficiency1 the flatness and meagreness of even so verbally faithful a prose version4 ,the effect on ,faust1 or on any high passionate poem1 of attempting to put it into prose1 is akin to what would be the effect on an exquisite bas-relief of reducing its projection one half by a persevering application of pumice4 ,in all genuine verse 7that is1 in all poetic verse7 the substance is so inwrought into the form and sound1 that if in translating you entirely disregard these1 rejecting both rhyme and measure1 you subject the verse to a second depletion right upon that which it has to suffer by the transplanting of it into another soil4 ,the translator of a poem has a much higher and subtler duty than just to take the words and through them attempt passively to render the page into his own language4 ,he must brace himself into an active state1 a creative mood1 the most creative he can command1 then transport himself into the mind and mental attitude of the poet he would translate1 feeling and seeing as the poet saw and felt4 ,to get into the mood out of which the words sprang1 he should go behind the words1 embracing them from within1 not merely seizing them from without4 ,having imbued himself with the thought and sentiment of the original1 let him1 if he can1 utter them in a still higher key4 ,such surpassing excellence would be the truest fidelity to the original1 and any cordial poet would especially rejoice in such elevation of his verse2 for the aspiring writer will often fall short of his ideal1 and to see it more nearly approached by a translator who has been kindled by himself1 to find some delicate new flower revealed in a nook which he had opened1 could not but give him a delight akin to that of his own first inspirations4 ,a poem1 a genuine poem1 assumes its form by an inward necessity4 ,paradise ,lost1 conceived in ,milton's brain1 could not utter itself in any other mode than the unrhymed harmonies that have given to our language a new music4 ,it could not have been written in the ,spenserian stanza4 ,what would the ,fairy ,queen be in blank verse8 ,for his theme and mood ,dante felt the need of the delicate bond of rhyme1 which enlivens musical cadence with sweet reiteration4 ,rhyme was then a new element in verse1 a modern sthetic creation2 and it is a help and an added beauty1 if it be not obtrusive and too self-conscious1 and if it be not a target at which the line aims2 for then it becomes a clog to freedom of movement1 and the pivot of factitious pauses1 that are offensive both to sense and to ear4 ,like buds that lie half-hidden in leaves1 rhymes should peep out1 sparkling but modest1 from the cover of words1 falling on the ear as though they were the irrepressible strokes of a melodious pulse at the heart of the verse4 ,the terza rima--already in use--,dante adopted as suitable to continuous narrative4 ,with his feeling and sthetic want rhymed verse harmonized1 the triple repetition offering no obstacle1 ,italian being copious in endings of like sound4 ,his measure is iambic1 free iambic1 and every line consists1 not of ten syllables1 but of eleven1 his native tongue having none other than feminine rhymes4 ,and this weakness is so inherent in ,italian speech1 that every line even of the blank verse in all the twenty-two tragedies of ,alfieri ends femininely1 that is1 with an unaccented eleventh syllable4 ,in all ,italian rhyme there is thus always a double rhyme1 the final syllable1 moreover1 invariably ending with a vowel4 ,this1 besides being too much rhyme and too much vowel1 is1 in iambic lines1 metrically a defect1 the eleventh syllable being a superfluous syllable4 ,in these two prominent features ,english verse is different from ,italian3 it has feminine rhymes1 but the larger part of its rhymes are masculine2 and it has fewer than ,italian4 ,this second characteristic1 the comparative fewness of rhymes1 is likewise one of its sources of strength3 it denotes musical richness and not poverty1 as at first aspect it seems to do1 the paucity of like-sounding syllables implying variety in its sounds4 ,it has all the vocalic syllables and endings it needs for softness1 and incloses them mostly in consonants for condensation1 vigor1 and emphasis4 ,primarily the translator has to consider the resources and individualities of his own tongue4 ,in the case of ,dante the rhythmical basis is the same in both languages2 for the iambic measure is our chief poetic vehicle1 wrought to perfection by ,shakespeare and ,milton4 ,there only remains1 then1 rhyme and the division into stanzas4 ,can the terza rima1 as used by ,dante1 be called a stanza8 ,the lines are not separated into trios1 but run into one another1 clinging very properly to the rhymes1 which1 interlinking all the stanzas by carrying the echo still onward1 bind each canto into one whole1 just as our ,spenserian form does each stanza into a whole of nine lines4 ,whether stanzas1 strictly speaking1 or not1 shall we say our mind frankly about the terza rima8 ,to us it seems not deserving of admiration for its own sake2 and we surmise that had it not been consecrated by ,dante1 neither ,byron nor ,shelley would have used it for original poems4 ,we are not aware that ,dante's example has been followed by any poet of note in ,italy4 ,terza rima keeps the attention suspended too long1 keeps it ever on the stretch for something that is to come1 and never does come1 until at the end of the canto1 namely1 the last rhyme4 ,the rhymes cannot be held down1 but are ever escaping and running ahead4 ,it looks somewhat like an artificial contrivance of the first rhymers of an uncultivated age4 ,but ,dante used it for his great song2 and there it stands forever1 holding in its folds the ,divina ,commedia4 ,now1 in rendering into ,english the poem of ,dante1 is it essential1--in order to fulfill the conditions of successful poetic translation1--to preserve the triple rhyme8 ,not having in ,english a corresponding number of rhymes1 will not the translator have to resort to transpositions1 substitutions1 forcings1 indirections1 in order to compass the meaning and the poetry8 ,place the passages already cited from ,mr4 ,dayman beside the original1 and the reader will be surprised to see how direct and literal1 how faithful at once to the ,italian thought and to ,english idiom in expressing it1 ,mr4 ,dayman is4 ,his harness of triplets seems hardly to constrain his movement1 so skillfully does he wear it4 ,if we confront him with the spirited version in quatrains of ,dr4 ,parsons1 in the passages cited from the ,inferno1 or with those from the ,paradiso1 in ,mr4 ,longfellow's less free unrhymed version1 the resources and flexibility of ,mr4 ,dayman in handling the difficult measure will be again manifest4 ,to enable our readers to compare the translations with the original and with one another1 we will give the ,italian1 and then the three versions1 of the latter part of the ,francesca story1 from ,canto ,v4 of the ,inferno3-- ,poi mi rivolsi a loro1 e parlai io1 ,e cominciai3 ,francesca1 i tuoi martiri ,a lagrimar mi fanno tristo1 e pio4 ,ma dimmi3 al tempo de' dolci sospiri1 ,a che1 e come concedette ,amore ,che conosceste i dubbiosi desiri8 ,ed ella a me3 nessun maggior dolore1 ,che ricordarsi del tempo felice ,nella miseria1 e ci sa 'l tuo dottore4 ,ma se a conoscer la prima radice ,del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto1 ,far come colui che piange1 e dice4 ,noi leggevamo un giorno per diletto ,di ,lancilotto1 come ,amor lo strinse4 ,soli eravamo1 e senza alcun sospetto4 ,per pi fiate gli occhi ci sospinse ,quella lettura1 e scolorocci 'l viso3 ,ma solo un punto fu quel1 che ci vinse4 ,qando leggemmo il disiato riso ,esser baciato da cotanto amante1 ,questi1 che mai da me non sia diviso1 ,la bocca mi baci tutto tremante4 ,galeotto fu il libro1 e chi lo scrisse3 ,quel giorno pi non vi leggemmo avante4 ,mentre che l'uno spirito queste disse1 ,l'altro piangeva si1 che di pietade ,io venni meno come s'io morisse1 ,e caddi1 come corpo morto cade4 ,mr4 ,dayman3-- ,then toward them turned again3 ',thy racking woe1' ,i said1 ',francesca1 wrings from out mine eyes ,the pious drops that sadden as they flow4 ,but tell me1 in your hour of honeyed sighs1 ,by whom and how love pitying broke the spell1 ,and in your doubtful longings made too wise4' ,and she to me3 ',no keener pang hath hell1 ,than to recall1 amid some deep distress1 ,our happier time3 thy teacher knows it well4 ,yet if desire so strong thy soul possess ,to trace the root from whence our love was bred1 ,his part be mine1 who tells and weeps no less4 ',t was on a day when we for pastime read ,of ,lancillot1 how love snared him to ruin3 ,we were alone1 nor knew suspicious dread4 ,oft on that reading paused our eyes1 renewing ,their glance2 and from our cheeks the color started2 ,but one sole moment wrought for our undoing3 ,when that we read of lover so kind-hearted ,kissing the smile so coveted before1 ,he that from me shall never more be parted ,kissed me with lip to lip1 trembling all o'er4 ,the broker of our vows1 it was the lay1 ,and he who wrote--that day we read no more4' ,the other spirit1 while the first did say ,these words1 so moand1 that with soft remorse ,as death had stricken me1 ,i swooned away1 ,and down ,i fell1 heavily as falls a corse4 ,mr4 ,longfellow3-- ,then unto them ,i turned me1 and ,i spake1 ,and ,i began3 ',thine agonies1 ,francesca1 ,sad and compassionate to weeping make me4 ,but tell me1 at the time of those sweet sighs1 ,by what and in what manner ,love conceded ,that you should know your dubious desires8' ,and she to me3 ',there is no greater sorrow ,than to be mindful of the happy time ,in misery1 and that thy ,teacher knows4 ,but if to recognize the earliest root ,of love in us thou hast so great desire1 ,i will do even as he who weeps and speaks4 ,one day we reading were for our delight ,of ,launcelot1 how ,love did him enthrall4 ,alone we were1 and without any fear4 ,full many a time our eyes together drew ,that reading1 and drove the color from our faces2 ,but one point was it that o'ercame us4 ,whenas we read of the much-longed-for smile ,being by such a noble lover kissed1 ,this one1 who ne'er from me shall be divided1 ,kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating4 ,galeotto was the book and he who wrote it4 ,that day no farther did we read therein4' ,and all the while one spirit uttered this1 ,the other one did weep so1 that1 for pity1 ,i swooned away as if ,i had been dying1 ,and fell even as a dead body falls4 ,dr4 ,parsons3-- ,then1 turning round to them1 ,i thus began3 ',francesca6 tears must overflow mine eyes3 ,my pitying soul thy martyr-throes unman2 ,but tell me1--in the time of happy sighs1 ,your vague desires how gave ,love utterance first8 ,and she to me3 ,the mightiest of all woes ,is1 in the midst of misery1 to be cursed ,with bliss remembered1--this thy teacher knows4 ,yet1 wouldst thou learn our passion's root and head1 ,as one may speak whose eyes with tears are dim1 ,so will ,i speak4 ,together once we read ,the tale of ,lancelot1--how ,love bound him4 ,alone we were without suspecting aught3 ,oft in perusal paled our cheeks their hue1 ,and oft our eyes each other's glances caught2 ,but one sole passage 't was which both o'erthrew4 ,at reading of the longed-for smile1--to be ,by such a lover's kissing so much blest1 ,this dearest--never shalt thou part from me6 ,his lips to mine1 to mine1 all trembling1 pressed4 ,the writer was our ,galeot with his book3-- ,that day we read no further on4 ,she stopped3 ,meanwhile he moaned so that compassion took ,my sense away1 and like a corse ,i dropped4 ,observe that ,dr4 ,parsons has put ,dante's twenty-eight lines of eleven syllables into twenty-four lines of ten syllables2 and this without losing a drop of the precious stream he undertakes to pour4 ,but why does he make ,francesca address her companion personally1 instead of saying1 who shall never part from me8 ,and why does ,mr4 ,dayman say1 pious drops1 instead of piteous8 ,mr4 ,dayman and ,mr4 ,longfellow fill up the twenty-eight lines4 ,in neither of the three is there any strain or wresting of the sense4 ,but all three1 and before them ,lord ,byron and ,carey1 mistranslate this passage1-- ,per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse ,quella lettura4 ,all these translators interpret it to mean1 that while they read1 their eyes often met2 whereas ,dante says1 they read that passage over more than once2 or1 literally rendered1 several times that reading or passage drew to it their eyes4 ,to restore the meaning of the original adds to the refinement of the scene4 ,why does ,mr4 ,longfellow use such long words as compassionate instead of pitiful or piteous1 recognize for know1 palpitating for trembling1 conceded that you should know for gave you to know8 ,by the resolution to translate line for line1 ,mr4 ,longfellow ties his poetic hands4 ,the first effect of this self-binding is1 to oblige him to use often long ,latin-,english instead of short ,saxon-,english words1 that is1 words that in most cases lend themselves less readily to poetic expression4 ,mr4 ,dayman1 not translating line for line1 is free from this prosaic incumbrance2 but as he makes it a rule to himself that every ,english canto shall contain the same number of lines as its original1 he is obliged1 much more often than ,mr4 ,longfellow1 to throw in epithets or words not in the ,italian4 ,and ,dr4 ,parsons1 who1 happily freeing himself from either verbal or numerical bond1 in several instances compresses a canto into two or three lines less than the ,italian1 and the ,,xxxi4 into nine lines less1 might with advantage have curtailed each canto ten or twelve lines4 ,do what we will1 poetic translation is brought about more from without than from within1 and hence there is apt to be a dryness of surface1 a lack of that sheen1 that spontaneous warm emanation1 which1 in good original work1 comes from free inward impulsion4 ,to counteract1 in so far as may be1 this proneness to a mechanical inflexibility1 the translator should keep himself free to wield boldly and with full swing his own native speech4 ,by his line-for-line allegiance1 ,mr4 ,longfellow forfeits much of this freedom4 ,he is too intent on the words2 he sacrifices the spirit to the letter2 he overlays the poetry with a verbal literalness2 he deprives himself of scope to give a billowy motion1 a heightened color1 a girded vigor1 to choice passages4 ,the rhythmical languor consequent on this verbal conformity1 this lineal servility1 is increased by a frequent looseness in the endings of lines1 some of which on every page1 and many on some pages1 have--contrary to all good usage--the superfluous eleventh syllable4 ,milton never allows himself this liberty1 nor ,mr4 ,tennyson in epic verse so little pretentious as ,idyls of the ,king4 ,nor do good blank-verse translators give in to it4 ,cowper does not in his ,iliad1 nor ,lord ,derby1 nor ,mr4 ,bryant in his version of the fifth book of the ,odyssey1 nor ,mr4 ,carey in his ,dante4 ,permissible at times in dramatic blank verse1 it is in epic rejected by the best artists as a weakness4 ,can it be that ,mr4 ,longfellow hereby aims to be more close to the form of ,dante8 ,whatever the cause of its use1 the effect is still farther to weaken his translation4 ,these loose poetic endings--and on most pages one third of the lines have eleven syllables and on some pages more than a third--do a part in causing ,mr4 ,longfellow's ,dante to lack the clean outline1 the tonic ring1 the chiseled edge of the original1 and in making his cantos read as would sound a high passionate tune played on a harp whose strings are relaxed4 ,looking at the printed ,italian ,dante beside the ,english1 in a volume where opposite each ,english page is the corresponding page of the original1 as in ,mr4 ,dayman's1 one cannot fail to be struck with the comparative narrowness of the ,italian column4 ,this comes of the comparative shortness of ,italian syllables4 ,for instance1 as the strongest exemplification1 the ever-recurring and1 and the often-repeated is1 are both expressed in ,italian by a single letter1 e4 ,and this shortness comes of the numerousness of vowels4 ,in lines of thirty letters ,dante will have on an average sixteen consonants to fourteen vowels1 nearly half and half2 while his translators have about twenty consonants to ten vowels1 or two to one4 ,from this comparative rejection of consonants1 ,italian cannot1 as ,english can1 bind into one syllable words of seven or eight letters1 like friends and straight1 nor even words of six letters1 like chimed1 shoots1 thwart1 spring2 nor does ,italian abound as ,english does in monosyllables1 and the few it has are mostly of but two or three letters4 ,in combination its syllables sometimes get to four letters1 as in fronte and braccia4 ,as a consequence hereof1 ,dante's lines1 although always of eleven syllables1 average about twenty-nine letters1 while those of the three translators about thirty-three4 ,hence1 the poem in their versions carries more weight than the original2 its soul is more cumbered with body4 ,in order to the faithful reproduction of ,dante1 to the giving the best transcript1 possible in ,english1 of his thought and feeling1 should not regard be had to the essential difference between the syllabic constitutions of the two languages1 what may be called the physical basis of the two mediums of utterance8 ,here is the ,francesca story1 translated in the spirit of this suggestion3-- ,i turned to them1 and then ,i spake3 ,francesca6 tears o'erfill mine eyes1 ,such pity thy keen pangs awake4 ,but say3 in th' hour of sweetest sighs1 ,by what and how found ,love relief ,and broke thy doubtful longing's spell8 ,and she3 ,there is no greater grief ,than joy in sorrow to retell4 ,but if so urgently one seeks ,to know our ,love's first root1 ,i will ,do as he does who weeps and speaks4 ,one day of ,lancelot we still ,read o'er1 how love held him enchained4 ,without mistrust we were alone4 ,our cheeks oft were of color drained3 ,one passage vanquished us1 but one4 ,when we read of lips longed for pressed ,by such a lover with a kiss1 ,this one whom naught from me shall wrest1 ,all trembling kissed my mouth4 ,to this ,that book and writer brought us4 ,we ,no farther read that day4 ,while she ,thus spake1 the other spirit wept ,so bitterly1 with pity ,i ,fell motionless1 my senses swept ,by swoon1 as one about to die4 ,in the very first line two ,italian trisyllables1 rivolsi and parlai1 are given in ,english with literal fidelity by two monosyllables1 turned and spake4 ,in the fourth observe how1 in a word-for-word rendering1 the eleven ,italian syllables become1 without any forcing1 eight ,english3 ,ma dimmi3 al tempo de' dolci sospiri3 ,but tell me3 in th' hour of sweet sighs4 ,for the sake of a more musical cadence1 this line is slightly modified4 ,again1 in the line1-- ,than joy in sorrow to retell1 joy represents1 and represents faithfully1 three words containing six syllables1 del tempo felice3 retell stands for ricordarsi1 and in sorrow for nella miseria1 or1 three syllables for six2 so that1 by means of eight syllables1 is given a full and complete translation of what in ,italian takes up seventeen4 ,english the most simple1 direct1 idiomatic1 is needed in order that a translation of ,dante be faithful to his simplicity and naturalness2 and this is the first fidelity his translator should feel himself bound to4 ,owing to the fundamental difference between the syllabic structures of the two languages1 we are enabled to put into ,english lines of eight syllables the whole meaning of ,dante's lines of eleven4 ,in the above experiment even more has been done4 ,the twenty-eight lines of ,dante are given in twenty-six lines of eight syllables each1 and this without any sacrifice of the thought or feeling2 for the this thy teacher knows1 which is omitted1 besides that the commentators cannot agree on its meaning1 is parenthetical in sense1 and with reverence be it said1 in so far a defect in such a relation4 ,as to the form of ,dante1 what is essential in that has been preserved1 namely1 the iambic measure and the rhyme4 ,let us try if this curtailment of syllables will be successful when applied to the terrible words1 written in blackest color1 over the gate of ,hell1 at the beginning of the third canto of the ,inferno3-- ,through me the path to place of wail3 ,through me the path to endless sigh3 ,through me the path to souls in bale4 ',twas ,justice moved my ,maker high3 ,wisdom supreme1 and ,might divine1 ,and primal ,love established me4 ,created birth was none ere mine1 ,and ,i endure eternally3 ,ye who pass in1 all hope resign4 ,has anything been lost in the transit from ,italian words to ,english8 ,english speech being organically more concentrated than ,italian1 does not the reduction of eleven syllables to eight especially subserve what ought to be the twofold aim of all poetic translation1 namely1 along with fidelity to the thought and spirit of the original1 fidelity to the idiom1 and cast and play of the translator's own tongue8 ,here is another short passage in a different key1--the opening of the last canto of the ,paradiso3-- ,maid-mother1 daughter of thy ,son1 ,meek1 yet above all things create1 ,fair aim of the ,eternal one1 ',tis thou who so our human state ,ennobledst1 that its ,maker deigned ,himself his creature's son to be4 ,this flower1 in th' endless peace1 was gained ,through kindling of ,god's love in thee4 ,in this passage nine ,italian lines of eleven syllables are converted into eight lines of eight syllables each4 ,we submit it to the candid reader of ,italian to say1 whether aught of the original has been sacrificed to brevity4 ,the rejection of all superfluity1 the conciseness and simplicity to which the translator is obliged by octosyllabic verse1 compensate for the partial loss of that breadth of sweep for which decasyllabic verse gives more room1 but of which the translator of ,dante does not feel the want4 ,one more short passage of four lines1--the famous figure of the lark in the twentieth ,canto of the ,paradiso3-- ,like lark that through the air careers1 ,first singing1 then1 silent his heart1 ,feeds on the sweetness in his ears1 ,such joy to th' image did impart ,th' eternal will4 ,this paper has exceeded the length we designed to give it2 but1 nevertheless1 we beg the reader's indulgence for a few moments longer1 while we conclude with an octosyllabic version of the last thirty lines of the celebrated ,ugolino story4 ,it is unrhymed2 for that terrible tale can dispense1 in ,english1 with soft echoes at the end of lines4 ,when locked ,i heard the nether door ,of the dread tower1 ,i without speech ,into my children's faces looked3 ,nor wept1 so inly turned to stone4 ,they wept3 and my dear ,anselm said1 ,thou look'st so1 father1 what hast thou8 ,still ,i nor wept nor answer made ,that whole day through1 nor the next night1 ,till a new sun rose on the world4 ,as in our doleful prison came ,a little glimmer1 and ,i saw ,on faces four my own pale stare1 ,both of my hands for grief ,i bit2 ,and they1 thinking it was from wish ,to eat1 rose suddenly and said3 ,father1 less shall we feel of pain ,if them wilt eat of us3 from thee ,came this poor flesh3 take it again4 ,i calmed me then1 not to grieve them4 ,the next two days we spake no word4 ,oh6 obdurate earth1 why didst not ope8 ,when we had come to the fourth day ,gaddo threw him stretched at my feet1 ,saying1 ,father1 why dost not help me8 ,there died he2 and1 as thou seest me1 ,i saw the three fall one by one ,the fifth and sixth day2 then ,i groped1 ,now blind1 o'er each2 and two whole days ,i called them after they were dead3 ,then hunger did what grief could not4 ,v4 ,,sainte-,,beuve1 ,,the ,,critic4 ,a literary critic1 a genuine one1 should carry in his brain an arsenal of opposites4 ,he should combine common sense with tact1 integrity with indulgence1 breadth with keenness1 vigor with delicacy1 largeness with subtlety1 knowledge with geniality1 inflexibility with sinuousness1 severity with suavity2 and1 that all these counter qualities be effective1 he will need constant culture and vigilance1 besides the union of reason with warmth1 of enthusiasm with self-control1 of wit with philosophy1--but hold3 at this rate1 in order to fit out the critic1 human nature will have to set apart its highest and best4 ,dr4 ,johnson declared1 the poet ought to know everything and to have seen everything1 and the ancients required the like of an orator4 ,truly1 the supreme poet should have manifold gifts1 be humanly indued as generously and completely as is the bust of ,homer1 ideally shaped by the light of the infallible artistic instinct and insight of the ,greeks4 ,the poet1 it is true1 must be born a poet1 and the critic is the child of culture4 ,but as the poet1 to perfect his birthright1 has need of culture1 so the man whom culture can shape and sharpen to the good critic1 must be born with many gifts1 to be susceptible of such shaping4 ,and when we reflect that the task of the critic is to see clearly into the subtlest and deepest mind1 to measure its hollows and its elevations1 to weigh all its individual and its composite powers1 and1 that from every one of the throbbing aggregates1 whom it is his office to analyze and portray1 issue lines that run on all sides into the infinite1 we must conclude that he who is to be the accomplished interpreter1 the trusted judge1 should be able swiftly to follow these lines4 ,long and exacting as is our roll of what is wanted to equip a veritable sure critic1 we have yet to add two cardinal qualifications1 which by the subject of our present paper are possessed in liberal allotment4 ,the first is1 joy in life1 from which the pages of ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve derive1 not a superficial sprightliness merely1 but a mellow1 radiant geniality4 ,the other1 which is of still deeper account1 is the capacity of admiration2 a virtue--for so it deserves to be called--born directly of the nobler sensibilities1 those in whose presence only can be recognized and enjoyed the lofty and the profound1 the beautiful and the true4 ,he who is not well endowed with these higher senses is not a bad critic2 he is no critic at all4 ,not only can he not discern the good there is in a man or a work1 he can as little discover and expose the bad2 for1 deficiencies implying failures to reach a certain fullness1 implying a falling short of the complete1 to say where and what are deficiencies1 involves the having in the mind an idea of the full and complete4 ,the man so meagrely furnished as to hold no such idea is but a carper1 not a critic4 ,to know the bad denotes knowledge of the good2 in criticism as in morals1 a righteous indignation can only flash from a shock to pure feelings4 ,in a notice of ,m4 ,thiers' chapter on ,st4 ,helena1 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve1 after expressing his admiration of the commentaries of ,napoleon on the campaigns of ,turenne1 ,frederic1 and ,caesar1 adds3 ,a man of letters smiles at first involuntarily to see ,napoleon apply to each of these famous campaigns a methodical criticism1 just as we would proceed with a work of the mind1 with an epic or tragic poem4 ,but is not a campaign of a great captain equally a work of genius8 ,napoleon is here the high sovereign critic1 the ,goethe in this department1 as the ,feuquires1 the ,jominis1 the ,st4 ,cyrs are the ,la ,harpes or the ,fontanes1 the ,lessings or the ,schlegels1 all good and expert critics2 but he is the first of all1 nor1 if you reflect on it1 could it have been otherwise4 ,and who then would say better things of ,homer than ,milton8--,goethe supreme in literary criticism1 ,milton on ,homer2 this touches the root of the matter2 sympathy with the writer and his work the critic must have1--sympathy as one of the sources of good judgment1 and even of knowledge4 ,you cannot know1 and therefore not judge of a man or book or thing1 unless you have some fellow-feeling with him or it2 and to judge well you must have much fellow-feeling4 ,the critic must1 moreover1 be a thinker2 reason is the critic's sun4 ,scott and ,byron could say just and fresh things about poets and poetry2 but neither could command the whole field1 nor dig deep into the soil4 ,witness ,byron's deliberate exaltation of ,pope4 ,whereas ,wordsworth and ,coleridge were among the soundest of critics1 because1 besides being poets1 they were both profound thinkers4 ,for the perfecting of the literary critic the especial sympathy needed is that with excellence2 for high literature is the outcome of the best there is in humanity1 the finished expression of healthiest aspirations1 of choicest thoughts1 the ripened fruit of noble1 of refined growths1 the perfected fruit1 with all the perfume and beauty of the flower upon it4 ,of this sympathy ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve1 throughout his many volumes1 gives overflowing evidence1 in addition to that primary proof of having himself written good poems4 ,besides the love1 he has the instinct1 of literature1 and this instinct draws him to what is its bloom and fullest manifestation1 and his love is the more warm and constant for being discriminative and refined4 ,through variety of knowledge1 with intellectual keenness1 he enjoys excellence in the diversified forms that literature assumes4 ,his pages abound in illustrations of his versatility1 which is nowhere more strikingly exhibited than in the contrast between two successive papers 7both equally admirable7 in the very first volume of the ,causeries du ,lundi1 the one on ,madame ,rcamier1 the other on ,napoleon4 ,read especially the series of paragraphs beginning1 ,some natures are born pure1 and have received quand mme the gift of innocence1 to see how gracefully1 subtly1 delicately1 with what a feminine tenderness1 he draws the portrait of this most fascinating of women1 this beautiful creature1 for whom grace and sweetness did even still more than beauty1 this fairy-queen of ,france1 this refined coquette1 who drew to her hundreds of hearts1 this kindly magician1 who turned all her lovers into friends4 ,then pass directly to the next paper1 on the terrible ,corsican1 who weakened his greatness by the gigantic--who loved to astonish--who delighted too much in what was his forte1 war1--who was too much a bold adventurer4 ,and further on1 the account of ,napoleon's conversation with ,goethe at ,weimar1 in which account ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve shows how fully he values the largeness and truthfulness and penetration of the great ,german4 ,the impression thus made on the reader as to the variousness of ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve's power is deepened by another paper in the same volume1 that on ,m4 ,guizot and his historic school1 a masterly paper1 which reasons convincingly against those historians who strain humanity1 who make the lesson that history teaches too direct and stiff1 who put themselves in the place of ,providence1 which1 as is said in another place 7vol4 v4 p4 #aej71 is often but a deification of our own thought4 ,in a paper published in #ahfb1 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve--who had then1 for more than thirty years1 been plying zealously and continuously the function of critic--describes what is a fundamental feature of his method in arriving at a judgment on books and authors4 ,literature1 literary production1 is in my eyes not distinct1 or at least not separable1 from the rest of the man and his organization4 ,i can enjoy a work1 but it is difficult for me to form a judgment on it independently of the man himself2 and ,i readily say1 as is the tree so is the fruit4 ,literary study thus leads me quite naturally to moral study4 ,this1 of course1 he can apply but partially to the ancients2 but with the moderns the first thing to do in order to know the work is to know the man who did it1 to get at his primary organization1 his interior beginnings and proclivities2 and to learn this1 one of the best means is1 to make yourself acquainted with his race1 his family1 his predecessors4 ,you are sure to recognize the superior man1 in part at least1 in his parents1 especially in his mother1 the most direct and certain of his parents2 also in his sisters and his brothers1 even in his children4 ,in these one discovers important features which1 from being too condensed1 too closely joined in the eminent individual1 are masked2 but whereof the basis1 the fond1 is found in others of his blood in a more naked1 a more simple state4 ,hereby is shown with what thoroughness and professional conscientiousness ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve sets himself to his work of critic4 ,partially applying to himself his method1 we discover in part the cause of his sympathy for feminine nature1 and of his tact in delineating it4 ,his father died before he was born2 and thence all living parental influence on him was maternal4 ,none of his volumes is more captivating than his ,portraits de ,femmes1 a translation of which we are glad to see announced4 ,of ,sainte-,beuve's love for excellence there is1 in the third volume of the ,nouveaux ,lundis1 an illustration1 eloquently disclosing how deep is his sympathy with the most excellent that human kind has known4 ,for the ,london ,exposition of #ahfb a magnificent folio of the ,new ,testament was prepared at the ,imperial ,press of ,paris4 ,the critic takes the occasion to write a paper on ,les saints ,evangiles1 especially the ,sermon on the ,mount4 ,after quoting and commenting on the ,beatitudes1 he continues3 ,had there ever before been heard in the world such accents1 such a love of poverty1 of self-divestment1 such a hunger and thirst for justice1 such eagerness to suffer for it1 to be cursed of men in behalf of it1 such an intrepid confidence in celestial recompense1 such a forgiveness of injuries1 and not simply forgiveness but a livelier feeling of charity for those who have injured you1 who persecute and calumniate you1 such a form of prayer and of familiar address to the ,father who is in heaven8 ,was there ever before anything like to that1 so encouraging1 so consoling1 in the teaching and the precepts of the sages8 ,was that not truly a revelation in the midst of human morals2 and if there be joined to it1 what cannot be separated from it1 the totality of such a life1 spent in doing good1 and that predication of about three years1 crowned by the crucifixion1 have we not a right to say that here was a 'new ideal of a soul perfectly heroic1' which1 under this half ,jewish1 ,galilean form was set before all coming generations8 ,who talks to us of myth1 of the realization1 more or less instinctive or philosophical1 of the human conscience reflecting itself in a being who only supplied the pretext and who hardly existed4 ,what6 do you not feel the reality1 the living1 vibrating1 bleeding1 compassionate personality1 which1 independently of what belief and enthusiasm may have added1 exists and throbs behind such words8 ,what more convincing demonstration of the beauty and truth of the entirely historic personage1 ,jesus1 than the ,sermon on the ,mount8 ,alluding1 then1 to the denial of originality in the moral doctrines of ,christianity1 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve1 after citing from ,socrates1 ,marcus ,aurelius1 and others1 passages wherein is recommended charity toward the human race1 declares that all these examples and precepts1 all that makes a fine body of social and philosophical morality1 is not ,christianity itself as beheld at its source and in its spirit4 ,what characterizes1 he proceeds1 the discourse on the mount and the other sayings and parables of ,jesus1 is not the charity that relates to equity and strict justice1 to which1 with a sound heart and upright spirit1 one attains2 it is something unknown to flesh and blood and to simple reason1 it is a kind of innocent and pure exaltation1 freed from rule and superior to law1 holily improvident1 a stranger to all calculation1 to all positive prevision1 unreservedly reliant on ,him who sees and knows all things1 and as a last reward counting on the coming of that kingdom of ,god1 the promise of which cannot fail3-- ,but ,i say unto you1 ,that ye resist not evil3 but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek1 turn to him the other also4 ,and if any man will sue thee at the law1 and take away thy coat1 let him have thy cloak also4444 ,give to him that asketh thee1 and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away4444 ,no man can serve two masters3 for either he will hate the one1 and love the other2 or else he will hold to the one1 and despise the other4 ,ye cannot serve ,god and mammon4 ,therefore ,i say unto you1 ,take no thought for your life1 what ye shall eat1 or what ye shall drink2 nor yet for your body1 what ye shall put on4 ,is not the life more than meat1 and the body than raiment8444 ,nothing of this is to be found in the ancient sages and moralists1 not in ,hesiod1 nor in the maxims of ,greece any more than in ,confucius4 ,it is not in ,cicero1 nor in ,aristotle1 nor even in ,socrates any more than in the modern ,franklin4 ,the principle of inspiration is different1 if indeed it be not opposite3 the paths may come together for a moment1 but they cross one another4 ,and it is this delicate ideal of devotedness1 of moral purification1 of continual renouncement and self-sacrifice1 breathing in the words and embodied in the person and life of ,christ1 which constitutes the entire novelty as well as the sublimity of ,christianity taken at its source4 ,of ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve's delight in what is the most excellent product of literature1 poetry1 testimony is borne by many papers1 ranging over the whole field of ,french poetry1 from its birth to its latest page4 ,poetry1 says he1 is the essence of things1 and we should be careful not to spread the drop of essence through a mass of water or floods of color4 ,the task of poetry is not to say everything1 but to make us dream everything4 ,and he cites a similar judgment of ,fnlon3 ,the poet should take only the flower of each object1 and never touch but what can be beautified4 ,in a critique of ,alfred de ,musset he speaks of the youthful poems of ,milton3 ',il ,penseroso' is the masterpiece of meditative and contemplative poetry2 it is like a magnificent oratorio in which prayer ascends slowly toward the ,eternal4 ,i make no comparison2 let us never take august names from their sphere4 ,all that is beautiful in ,milton stands by itself2 one feels the tranquil habit of the upper regions1 and continuity in power4 ,in a paper on the letters of ,ducis1 he proves that he apprehends the proportions of ,shakespeare4 ,he asks3 ,have we then got him at last8 ,is our stomach up to him8 ,are we strong enough to digest this marrow of lion 7cette moelle de lion78 ,and again1 in an article on the men of the eighteenth century1 he writes3 ,one may be born a sailor1 but there is nothing for it like seeing a storm1 nor for a soldier like seeing a battle4 ,a ,shakespeare1 you will say1 very nearly did without all that1 and yet he knew it all4 ,but ,nature never but once made a ,shakespeare4 ,like most writers1 of whatever country1 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve has formed himself on native models1 and the ,french having no poet of the highest class1 no ,dante1 no ,shakespeare1 no ,goethe1 it is a further proof of his breadth and insight that he should so highly value the treasures in the deeper mines opened by these foreigners4 ,seeing1 too1 how catholic he is1 and liberal toward all other greatness1 one even takes pleasure in his occasional exuberance of national complacency4 ,whenever he speaks of ,montaigne or ,la ,fontaine or ,molire1 his words flame with a tempered enthusiasm4 ,but he throws no dust in his own eyes3 his is a healthy rapture1 a torch lighted by the feelings1 but which the reason holds upright and steady4 ,his native favorites he enjoys as no ,englishman or ,german could1 but he does not overrate them4 ,nor does he overrate ,voltaire1 whom he calls the ,frenchman par excellence1 and of whom he is proud as the literary sovereign of his age4 ,at the same time1 in articles directly devoted to ,joubert1 as well as by frequent citations of his judgments1 he lauds this spiritually-minded thinker as one of the best of critics4 ,and yet of ,voltaire1 ,joubert says the hardest things3 ,voltaire is sometimes sad2 he is excited2 but he is never serious4 ,his graces even are impudent4--,there are defects difficult to perceive1 that have not been classed or defined1 and have no names4 ,voltaire is full of them4 ,in a paper on ,louise ,lab1 a poetess of the sixteenth century1 he reproduces some of her poems and several passages of prose1 and then adds3 ,these passages prove1 once more1 the marked superiority that1 at almost all times1 ,french prose has over ,french poetry4 ,no ,german or ,english or ,italian critic could say this of his native literature1 and the saying of it by the foremost of ,french critics is not an exaltation of ,french prose1 it is a depression of ,french poetry4 ,in this judgment there is a reach and severity of which possibly the eminent critic was not fully conscious2 for it amounts to an acknowledgment that the nature and language of the ,french are not capable of producing and embodying the highest poetry4 ,goethe1 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve always mentions with deference4 ,on ,eckerman's ,conversations with ,goethe he has a series of three papers1 wherein he deals chiefly with the critic and sage1 exhibiting with honest pride ,goethe's admiration of some of the chief ,french writers1 and his acknowledgment of what he owed them4 ,to a passage relating to the ,french translation of ,eckerman1 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve has the following note1 which we1 on this side the ,atlantic1 may cherish as a high tribute to our distinguished countrywoman3 ,the ,english translation is by ,miss ,fuller1 afterwards ,marchioness ,ossoli1 who perished so unhappily by shipwreck4 ,an excellent preface precedes this translation1 and ,i must say that for elevated comprehension of the subject and for justness of appreciation it leaves our preface far behind it4 ,miss ,fuller1 an ,american lady of ,boston1 was a person of true merit and of great intellectual vigor4 ,a sympathetic student of ,goethe1 ,margaret ,fuller purposed to write a life of him2 and seeing what critical capacity and what insight into the nature of ,goethe she has shown in this preface1 we may be confident that she would have made a genuine contribution to the ,goethe literature1 had she lived to do that and other high literary work4 ,her many friends had nearer and warmer motives for deploring the early loss of this gifted1 generous1 noble-hearted woman4 ,one of the busiest functions of the critic being to sift the multifarious harvest of contemporaneous literature1 he must have a hand that can shake hard1--and hit hard1 too1 at times4 ,for fifteen years ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve furnished once a week1 under the title of ,causeries du ,lundi1 a critical paper1 to a ,paris daily journal2 not short1 rapid notices1 but articles that would cover seven or eight pages of one of our double-columned monthly magazines4 ,he was thus ever in the thick of the literary mle4 ,attractions and repulsions1 sympathies and antipathies1 there will be wherever men do congregate2 the sthetic plane is as open as any other to personal preferences and friendships4 ,a literary circle as large as that of ,paris1 if too miscellaneous and extensive to become one multitudinous mutual-admiration-society1 will1 through cliques and coteries1 betray some of its vices4 ,in this voluminous series of papers the critical pen1 when most earnestly eulogistic or most sharply incisive1 is wielded with so much skill and art and fine temper1 that personality is seldom transpicuous4 ,the ,parisian reader will no doubt often perceive1 in this or that paragraph or paper1 a heightening or a subduing of color not visible to the foreigner1 who cannot so well trace the marks of political1 religious1 or personal influences4 ,his perfected praise ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve reserves for those of the illustrious dead who are embalmed in their own excellence4 ,besides devoting many papers 7among the most valuable of the series7 to these magnates of literature1 he delights in frequent illustrative reference to them1--a sign this of ripe culture in a critic1 and of trustworthiness4 ,out of the severe things occasionally said1 the sting is mostly taken by the temper in which they are said1 or by the frank recognition of virtues and beauties beside vices and blemishes4 ,in the general tone there is a clear humanity1 a seemly gentlemanliness4 ,of the humane spirit wherewith ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve tempers condemnation1 take the following as one of many instances4 ,in the correspondence of ,lamennais there is laid bare such contradictions between his earlier and his later sentiments on religious questions1 that the reader is thus feelingly guarded against being too harsh in his censure3 ,let us cast a look on ourselves1 and ask if in our lives1 in our hearts1 from youth to our latter years1 there are none of these boundless distances1 these secret abysses1 these moral ruins1 perhaps1 which1 for being hidden1 are none the less real and profound4 ,writing weekly for the feuilleton of a ,paris daily journal1 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve cannot but be sometimes diffuse2 but his diffuseness is always animated1 never languid4 ,fluent1 conversational1 ever polished1 he is full of happy turns and of ,gallic sprightliness4 ,when the occasion offers1 he is concise1 condensed even in the utterance of a principle or of a comprehensive thought4 ,admiration is a much finer test of literary talent1 a sign much more sure and delicate1 than all the art of satire4 ,by the side of this may be placed a sentence he cites from ,grimm3 ,people who so easily admire bad things are not in a state to enjoy good4 ,how true and cheering is this3 ,there is in each of us a primitive ideal being1 whom ,nature has wrought with her finest and most maternal hand1 but whom man too often covers up1 smothers1 or corrupts4 ,speaking of the sixteenth century1 he says3 ,what it wanted was taste1 if by taste we understand choice clean and perfect1 the disengagement of the elements of the beautiful4 ,when1 to give a paragraph its fit ending1 the thought allows of an epigrammatic point1 if he does not happen to have one of his own he knows where to borrow just what is wanted4 ,speaking of embellished oratorical diction1 he quotes ,talleyrand on some polished oration that was discussed in his presence3 ,it is not enough to have fine sentences3 you must have something to put into them4 ,commenting on the hyper-spirituality of ,m4 ,laprade1 he says3 ,m4 ,laprade starts from the absolute notion of being4 ,for him the following is the principle of ,art1--'to manifest what we feel of the ,absolute ,being1 of the ,infinite1 of ,god1 to make him known and felt by other men1 such in its generality is the end of ,art4' ,is this true1 is it false8 ,i know not3 at this elevation one always gets into the clouds4 ,like the most of those who pride themselves on metaphysics1 he contents himself with words 7il se paye de mots74 ,here is a grand thought1 that flashes out of the upper air of poetry3 ,humanity1 that eternal child that has never done growing4 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve's irony1 keen and delicate1 is a sprightly medium of truth3 witness this passage on a new volume of ,m4 ,michelet3 ,narrative1 properly so called1 which never was his forte1 is almost entirely sacrificed4 ,seek here no historical highway1 well laid1 solid1 and continuous2 the method adopted is absolute points of view2 you run with him on summits1 peaks1 on needles of granite1 which he selects at his pleasure to gets views from4 ,the reader leaps from steeple to steeple4 ,m4 ,michelet seems to have proposed to himself an impossible wager1 which1 however1 he has won1--to write history with a series of flashes4 ,could there be a more subtle1 covert way of saying of a man that he is hardened by self-esteem than the following on ,m4 ,guizot3 ,the consciousness that he has of himself1 and a natural principle of pride1 place him easily above the little susceptibilities of self-love4 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve is not an admirer of ,louis ,philippe1 and among other sly hits gives him the following3 ,louis ,philippe was too much like a bourgeois himself to be long respected by the bourgeoisie4 ,just as in former times the ,king of ,france was only the first gentleman of the kingdom1 he was nothing but the first bourgeois of the country4 ,what witty satire on ,lamartine he introduces1 with a recognition of popularity that1 with one who takes so much joy in applause as ,lamartine does1 is enough to take the poison out of the sting3 ,those who knew his verses by heart 7and the number who do is large among the men of our age7 meet1 not without regret1 with whole strips of them spread out1 drowned1 as it were1 in his prose4 ,this prose is1 in ',les ,confidences1' too often but the paraphrase of his verses1 which were themselves become1 toward the last1 paraphrases of his feelings4 ,amends are made to ,lamartine on another occasion1 when1 citing some recent ,french sonnets1 he says3 ,neither ,lamartine nor ,hugo nor ,vigny wrote sonnets4 ,the swans and the eagles1 in trying to enter this cage1 would have broken their wings4 ,that was for us1 birds of a less lofty flight and less amplitude of wing4 ,this is better as modesty than as criticism4 ,shakespeare1 ,milton1 ,wordsworth1 had wings of vaster sweep as well as of more gorgeous plumage than these ,french soarers1 and they enjoyed getting into the cage of the sonnet1 and sang therein some of their strongest as well as sweetest notes4 ,a thorough ,frenchman1 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve delights in ,french minds1 just as a beauty delights in her mirror1 which throws back an image of herself4 ,his excellence as a critic is primarily owing to this joy in things ,french4 ,through means of it he knows them through and through3 they are become transparent2 and while his feelings are aglow1 his intellect looks calmly right through them1 and sees on the other side the shadows cast by the spots and opacities which frustrate more or less the fullest illumination4 ,freely he exhibits these shadows4 ,neither ,bossuet nor ,louis ,,xiv41 neither ,voltaire nor ,branger1 is spared1 nor the ,french character1 with its proneness to frivolity and broad jest1 its thirst for superficial excitement4 ,whatever his individual preferences1 his mental organization is so large and happy1 that he enjoys1 and can do equal justice to1 ,father ,lacordaire and ,m4 ,michelet1 to ,madame de ,stal and ,m4 ,guizot1 to ,corneille and ,goethe1 to ,fnlon and ,m4 ,renan1 to ,marie ,antoinette and ,mirabeau4 ,have you then for ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve1 some reader will be impatient to ask1 nothing but praise8 ,not much else4 ,commencing his literary career in #ahbg1 when only in his twenty-third year1 from that date to #ahdi his writings1 chiefly in the shape of literary portraits1 fill several thousand pages4 ,between his forty-fifth to his sixtieth year he wrote twenty-three volumes1 containing about eleven thousand pages1 on four or five hundred different authors and subjects4 ,this is the period of his critical maturity1 the period of the ,causeries du ,lundi1 followed by the ,nouveaux ,lundis4 ,many men write voluminously1 but most of these only write about a subject1 not into it4 ,only the few who can write into their subject add something to literature4 ,one of these few is ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve4 ,in his mind there is vitality to animate his large acquirement1 to make his many chapters buoyant and stimulant4 ,all through his writings is the sparkle of original life4 ,but let us now cheer the reader who is impatient of much praise1 and at the same time perform the negative part of our task4 ,well1 then1 to be bold1 as befits a critic of the critic1 we beard the lion in his very den4 ,we challenge a definition he gives of the critic4 ,in the seventh volume of the ,causeries1 article ,grimm1 he says3 ,when ,nature has endowed some one with this vivacity of feeling1 with this susceptibility to impression1 and that the creative imagination be wanting1 this some one is a born critic1 that is to say1 a lover and judge of the creations of others4 ,why did ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve make ,goethe sovereign in criticism8 ,why did he think ,milton peculiarly qualified to interpret ,homer8 ,from the deep principle of like unto like2 only spirit can know spirit4 ,what were the worth of a comment of ,john ,locke on ,paradise ,lost1 except to reveal the mental composition of ,john ,locke8 ,the critic should be what ,locke was1 a thinker1 but to be a judge of the highest form of literature1 poetry1 he must moreover carry within him1 inborn1 some share of that whereby poetry is fledged1 creative imagination4 ,he may want the accomplishment of verse1 or the constructive faculty1 but more than the common allowance of sensibility to the beautiful he must have4 ,but do not the presence of vivacity of feeling with susceptibility to impression imply the imaginative temperament8 ,if not1 then we confidently assure ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve that had his definition fitted himself1 his ,causeries du ,lundi would never have been rescued from the quick oblivion of the feuilleton4 ,now and then there are betrayals of that predominant ,french weakness1 which the ,french will persist in cherishing as a virtue1--the love of glory4 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve thinks ,buffon's passion for glory saved him in his latter years from ennui1 from that languor of the soul which follows the age of the passions4 ,where are to be found men more the victims of disgust with life than that eminent pair1 not more distinguished for literary brilliancy and contemporaneous success than for insatiable greed of glory1--,byron and ,chateaubriand8 ,no form of self-seeking is morally more weakening than this quenchless craving1 which makes the soul hang its satisfaction on what is utterly beyond its sway1 on praise and admiration4 ,these stimulants--withdrawn more or less even from the most successful in latter years--leave a void which becomes the very nursery of ennui1 or even of self-disgust4 ,instead of glory being the potent motive-power in all great souls1 as ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve approvingly quotes1 it is1 with a surer moral instinct1 called by ,milton1-- ,that last infirmity of noble mind4 ,in some of the noblest and greatest1 so subordinate is it as hardly to be traceable in their careers4 ,love of glory was not the spring that set and kept in motion ,kepler and ,newton1 any more than ,shakespeare and ,pascal or ,william of ,orange and ,washington4 ,the military glory wherewith ,napoleon fed and flattered the ,french nation for fifteen years1 and the astonishing intellectual and animal vigor of the conqueror's mind1 dazzle even ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve1 so that he does not perceive the gaping chasms in ,napoleon's moral nature1 and the consequent one-sidedness of his intellectual action1 nor the unmanning effects of his despotism4 ,the words used to describe the moral side of the ,imperial career are as insufficient as would be the strokes of a gray crayon to depict a conflagration or a sunset4 ,in the paper from which has already been quoted he speaks of the rare good sense of ,napoleon1 of his instinct of justice4 ,but was it not a compact array of the selfish impulses against a weak instinct of justice1 backed by a ,titan's will1 wielding a mighty intellect1 that enabled ,napoleon to be the disloyal usurper1 then the hardened despot and the merciless devastator8 ,again1 can it be said of ,napoleon that he possessed good sense in a rare degree8 ,good sense is an instinctive insight into all the bearings of act or thought1 an intuitive discernment of the relations and consequences of conduct or purpose1 a soundness of judgment1 resulting from the soundness of1 and equilibrium among1 the upper powers of reason and sensibility4 ,the moral side is at least the half of it3 ,napoleon's moral endowment was but fractional4 ,good sense1 it may be added1 lies solidly at the basis of all good work1 except such as is purely professional or technical1 or in its action one-sided2 and even in such its presence must be felt4 ,in whatever reaches general human interests1 whether as practical act or imaginative creation1 good sense must be1 for their prosperity1 a primary ingredient4 ,the ,tempest and ,don ,quixote shoot up into shining1 imperishable beauty because their roots draw their first nourishment from this hearty1 inexhaustible substratum4 ,and let us say1 that in ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve himself good sense is the foundation of his eminent critical ability4 ,he has been led1 we conceive1 to attribute more of it to ,napoleon than is his due by the blinding splendor of ,napoleon's military genius1 through which1 with such swiftness and cumulative effect1 he adapted means to ends on the purely material plane4 ,when ,murray applied to ,lord ,byron to write a book about the life and manners of the upper class in ,italy1 ,byron declined the proposal from personal regards1 and then added1 that were he to write such a book it would be misjudged in ,england2 for1 said he1 their moral is not your moral4 ,such international misinterpretations and exaggerations are instinctive and involuntary4 ,a nation from its being a nation1 has a certain one-sidedness4 ,to the ,italian 7even to one who carries a stiletto7 the ,english practice of boxing is a sheer brutality2 while to an ,englishman 7himself perhaps not a ,joseph7 the cavaliere servente is looked upon with reprobation tempered by scorn4 ,to this misjudgment from the foreign side and over-estimation on the domestic1 books1 too1 are liable2 but to books as being more abstract than usages1 more ideal than manners1 an absolute moral standard can with less difficulty be applied4 ,applying it to ,gil ,blas1 is not ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve subject to arraignment when he speaks of this and the other writings of ,le ,sage as being the mirror of the world8 ,molire1 too1 is a satirist1 and from his breadth a great one2 and surely the world he holds a mirror before is a much purer world than that of ,le ,sage2 and what of the ,shakespearean world8 ,the world of ,le ,sage is a nether world4 ,of ,gil ,blas it has been well said that the book is moral like experience4 ,the experience one may get in brothels and hells1 in consorting with pimps and knaves1 has in it lessons of virtue and morality1--for those who can extract them2 but even for these few it is a very partial teaching2 and for the many who cannot read so spiritually1 whether in the book or the brothel1 the experience is demoralizing and deadening4 ,but toward the end of the paper the critic lets it appear that he does not place ,le ,sage so high as some of his phrases prompt us to infer2 and he quotes this judgment of ,joubert3 ,of the novels of ,le ,sage it may be said that they seem to have been written in a caf1 by a player of dominoes1 on coming out of the comic theatre4 ,without being over-diffident1 we may feel our footing not perfectly secure on ,french ground when we differ from a ,frenchman2 we are therefore not sorry to catch ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve tripping on ,english ground4 ,in a review of the translation of the celebrated ,letters of ,lord ,chesterfield--whom he calls the ,la ,rochefoucauld of ,england--he refers to1 and in part quotes1 the passages in which ,chesterfield gives his son advice as to his liaisons2 and he adds3 ,all ,chesterfield's morality1 on this head1 is resumed in a line of ,voltaire1-- ,il n'est jamais de mal en bonne compagnie4 ,it is these passages that make the grave ,dr4 ,johnson blush3 we only smile at them4 ,for ourselves1 we blush with ,johnson1 not that the man of the world should give to his youthful son1 living at a corrupt ,continental court1 counsel as to relations which were regarded as inevitable in such a circle2 but that the heart of the father should not have poured 7were it but parenthetically7 through the pen of the worldling some single sentence like this3 ,writing to you1 my son1 as an experienced man of the world to one inexperienced1 ,i recommend the good taste in such matters and the delicacy which become a gentleman2 but to his dear boy1 your father says1 avoid1 if possible1 such liaisons2 preserve your purity2 nothing will give you such a return throughout the whole of the future4 ,but1 a single sentence like this would vitiate the entire ,chesterfieldian correspondence4 ,how fully and warmly ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve prizes moral worth may be learnt from many passages4 ,not the least animated and cordial of his papers is one on the ,abb ,gerbet1 in the sixth volume1 a paper which shows1 as ,gustave ,planche said of him1 that he studies with his heart1 as women do2 and one in the second volume on ,malesherbes1 whom he describes as being separated1 on the moral side1 from the ,mirabeaus and the ,condorcets not by a shade1 but by an abyss1 and whom he sums up as great magistrate1 minister too sensitive and too easily discouraged1 heroic advocate1 and sublime victim4 ,of this noble1 deeply dutiful1 self-sacrificing ,frenchman1 this exemplar of moral greatness1 ,lord ,lansdowne wrote many years before the ,french ,revolution3 ,i have seen for the first time in my life what ,i did not believe could exist1 that is1 a man who is exempt from fear and from hope1 and who nevertheless is full of life and warmth4 ,nothing can disturb his peace2 nothing is necessary to him1 and he takes a lively interest in all that is good4 ,in a paper on a volume of miscellaneous prose essays by ,m4 ,laprade1 ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve has this sentence3 ,what strikes me above all and everywhere is1 that the author1 whether he reasons or whether he addresses himself to literary history1 only understands his own mode of being and his own individuality4 ,hereby he reveals to us that he is not a critic4 ,the first paragraph of a keen critique on ,m4 de ,pontmartin ends thus3 ,to say of even those writers who are opposed to us nothing which their judicious friends do not already think and are obliged to admit1 this is my highest ambition4 ,discussing the proper method of dealing with the past1 he writes3 ,for myself ,i respect tradition and ,i like novelty3 ,i am never happier than when ,i can succeed in reconciling them together4 ,of ,hoffman he says1 in a paper on literary criticism3 ,he has many of the qualities of a true critic1 conscientiousness1 independence1 ideas1 an opinion of his own4 ,these sentences1 with others of like import1 are keys to the character of the volumes from which they are taken4 ,the office of the critic ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve administers1 not for temporary or personal ends1 but with a disinterested sense of its elevation and its responsibilities4 ,through healthy sympathies and knowledge ample and ripe1 through firm sense with artistic flexibility1 through largeness of view and subtlety of insight1 he enters upon it more than ordinarily empowered for its due discharge4 ,he is at once what the ,french call fin and what the ,english call sound4 ,in literary work1 in biographical work1 in work sthetical and critical1 he delights1 and he has a wide capacity of appropriation4 ,the spirit of a book1 a man1 an age1 he seizes quickly4 ,with a nice perception of shades he catches the individual color of a mind or a production2 and by the same faculty he grasps the determining principles in a character4 ,delicately1 strongly1 variously endowed1 there is a steady equilibrium among his fine powers4 ,considering the bulk and vast variety and general excellence of his critical work1 is it too much to say of him1 that he is not only1 as he has been called1 the foremost of living critics1 but that he deserves to hold the first place among all critics8 ,no other has done so much so well4 ,goethe and ,coleridge are something more2 they are critics incidentally2 but ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve1 with poetical and philosophical qualities that lift him to a high vantage-ground1 has made criticism his life-work1 and through conscientious and symmetrical use of these qualities has done his work well4 ,besides much else in his many and many-sided volumes1 there is to be read in them a full1 spirited history of ,french literature4 ,our attempt to make ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve better known on this side the ,atlantic we cannot more fitly conclude than with a sketch of him--a literary sketch--by himself4 ,this we find in the fifth volume of the ,nouveaux ,lundis1 in a paper on ,molire1 published in ,july1 #ahfc4 ,a man who1 in the autumnal ripeness of his powers1 thus frankly tells us his likes and dislikes1 tells us what he is4 ,while by reflected action the passage becomes a self-portraiture1 it is a sample of finest criticism4 ,to make ,molire loved by more people is in my judgment to do a public service4 ,indeed1 to love ,molire--,i mean to love him sincerely and with all one's heart--it is1 do you know8 to have within one's self a guarantee against many defects1 much wrong-headedness4 ,it is1 in the first place1 to dislike what is incompatible with ,molire1 all that was counter to him in his day1 and that would have been insupportable to him in ours4 ,to love ,molire is to be forever cured--do not say of base and infamous hypocrisy1 but of fanaticism1 of intolerance1 and of that kind of hardness which makes one anathematize and curse2 it is to carry a corrective to admiration even of ,bossuet1 and for all who1 after his example1 exult1 were it only in words1 over their enemy dead or dying2 who usurp ,i know not what holy speech1 and involuntarily believe themselves to be1 with the thunderbolt in their hand1 in the region and place of the ,most ,high4 ,men eloquent and sublime1 you are far too much so for me6 ,to love ,molire1 is to be sheltered against1 and a thousand leagues away from1 that other fanaticism1 the political1 which is cold1 dry1 cruel1 which never laughs1 which smells of the sectary1 which1 under pretext of ,puritanism1 finds means to mix and knead all that is bitter1 and to combine in one sour doctrine the hates1 the spites1 and the ,jacobinism of all times4 ,it is to be not less removed1 on the other hand1 from those tame1 dull souls who1 in the very presence of evil1 cannot be roused to either indignation or hatred4 ,to love ,molire1 is to be secured against giving in to that pious and boundless admiration for a humanity which worships itself1 and which forgets of what stuff it is made1 and that1 do what it will1 it is always poor human nature4 ,it is1 not to despise it too much1 however1 this common humanity1 at which one laughs1 of which one is1 and into which we throw ourselves through a healthful hilarity whenever we are with ,molire4 ,to love and cherish ,molire1 is to detest all mannerism in language and expression2 it is1 not to take pleasure in1 or to be arrested by1 petty graces1 elaborate subtlety1 superfine finish1 excessive refinement of any kind1 a tricky or artificial style4 ,to love ,molire1 it is to be disposed to like neither false wit nor pedantic science2 it is to know how to recognize at first sight our ,trissotins#f and our ,vadius even under their rejuvenated jaunty airs2 it is1 not to let one's self be captivated at present any more than formerly by the everlasting ,philaminte1 that affected pretender of all times1 whose form only changes and whose plumage is incessantly renewed2 it is1 to like soundness and directness of mind in others as well as in ourselves4 ,i only give the first movement and the pitch2 on this key one may continue1 with variations4 #f ,trissotin1 ,vadius1 and ,philaminte1 are personages in ,molire's comedy of ,les ,femmes ,savantes 7,the ,blue-,stockings74 ,to love and openly to prefer ,corneille1 as certain minds do1 is no doubt a fine thing1 and1 in one sense1 a very legitimate thing2 it is1 to dwell in1 and to mark one's rank in1 the world of great souls3 but is it not to run the risk of loving together with the grand and sublime1 false glory a little1 to go so far as not to detest inflation and magniloquence1 an air of heroism on all occasions8 ,he who passionately loves ,corneille cannot be an enemy to a little boasting4 ,on the other hand1 to love and prefer ,racine1 ah6 that is1 no doubt1 to love above all things1 elegance1 grace1 what is natural and true 7at least relatively71 sensibility1 touching and charming passion2 but at the same time is it not also1 to allow your taste and your mind to be too much taken with certain conventional and over-smooth beauties1 a certain tameness and petted languidness1 with certain excessive and exclusive refinements8 ,in a word1 to love ,racine so much1 it is to run the risk of having too much of what in ,france is called taste1 and which brings so much distaste4 ,to love ,boileau--but no1 one does not love ,boileau1 one esteems him1 one respects him2 we admire his uprightness1 his understanding1 at times his animation1 and if we are tempted to love him1 it is solely for that sovereign equity which made him do such unshaken justice to the great poets his contemporaries1 and especially to him whom he proclaims the first of all1 ,molire4 ,to love ,la ,fontaine1 is almost the same thing as to love ,molire2 it is1 to love nature1 the whole of nature1 humanity ingenuously depicted1 a representation of the grand comedy of a hundred different acts1 unrolling itself1 cutting itself up before our eyes into a thousand little scenes with the graces and freedoms that are so becoming1 with weaknesses also1 and liberties which are never found in the simple1 manly genius of the master of masters4 ,but why separate them8 ,la ,fontaine and ,molire--we must not part them1 we love them united4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the number of ,putnam's ,magazine1 containing this paper1 was sent to ,m4 ,sainte-,beuve accompanied by a note4 ,in due time ,i received an answer to the note1 saying that the ,magazine had not reached him4 ,hereupon ,i sent the article by itself4 ,on receiving it he wrote the following acknowledgment4 ,in my note ,i referred to a rumor of his illness4 ,his disease was1 by post-mortem examination1 discovered to be as the newspapers had reported1 the stone4 ,but a consultation of physicians declared that it was what he states it to be in his letter4 ,had they not made so gross a mistake1 his life might have been prolonged4 ,,paris1 #f ,decembre1 #ahfh1 ,no4 #aa ,rue ,mont ,parnasse4 ,,cher ,,monsieur3-- ,oh6 ,cette fois je reois bien dcidment le trs aimable et si bien etudi portrait du critique4 ,comment exprimer comme je le sens ma gratitude pour tant de soin1 d'attention pntrante1 de dsir d'tre agrable tout en restant juste8 ,il y avait certes moyen d'insister bien plus sur les variations1 les disparates et les dfaillances momentanes de la pense et du jugement travers cette suite de volumes4 ,c'est toujours un sujet d'tonnement pour moi1 et cette fois autant que jamais1 de voir comment un lecteur ami et un juge de got parvient tirer une figure une et consistante de ce qui ne me parait moi mme dans mon souvenir que le cours d'un long fleuve qui va s'pandant un pen au hazard des pentes et dsertant continuellement ses rives4 ,de tels portraits comme celui que vous voulez bien m'offrir me rendent un point d'appui et me feraient vritablement croire moi-mme4 ,et quand je songe a l'immense quantit d'esprits auxquels vous me prsentez sous un aspect si favorable et si magistral dans ce nouveau monde de tant de jeunesse et d'avenir1 je me prends d'une sorte de fiert et de courageuse confiance comme en prsence dj de la postrit4 ,le mal auquel vous voulez bien vous intresser est tout simplement une hypertrophie de la prostate4 ,les souffrances ne sont pas vives1 mais l'incommodit est grande1 ne pouvant supporter aucun degr le mouvement de la voiture1 ce qui restreint ma vie sociale un bien court rayon4 ,veuillez agreer1 cher ,monsieur1 l'assurance de ma cordiale gratitude1 et de mes sentiments les plus distingus4 ,,sainte-,,beuve4 ,,vi4 ,,thomas ,,carlyle4 ,a brain ever aglow with self-kindled fire--a cerebral battery bristling with magnetic life--such is ,thomas ,carlyle4 ,exceptional fervor of temperament1 rare intellectual vivacity1 manful earnestness--these are the primary qualifications of the man4 ,he has an uncommon soul-power4 ,hence his attractiveness1 hence his influence4 ,every page1 every paragraph1 every sentence1 throbs with his own being4 ,themselves all authors put1 of course1 more or less1 into what they write3 few1 very few1 can make their sentences quiver with themselves4 ,this ,mr4 ,carlyle does by the intenseness of a warm individuality1 by the nimble vigor of his mental life1 and1 be it added1 by the rapture of his spirituality4 ,the self1 in his case1 is a large1 deep self1 and it sends an audible pulse through his pen into his page4 ,to all sane men is allotted a complete endowment of mental faculties1 of capacities of intellect and feeling2 the degree to which these are energized1 are injected with nervous flame1 makes the difference between a genius and a blockhead4 ,there being high vital pressure at a full1 rich1 interior source1 and thence1 strong mental currents1 through what channels the currents shall flow depends on individual aptitudes1 these aptitudes shaping1 in the one case1 a ,dante1 in another1 a ,newton1 in another1 a ,mirabeau4 ,and ,nature1 with all her generosity1 being jealous of her rights1 allows no interchange of gifts4 ,even the many-sided ,goethe could not1 by whatever force of will and practice1 have written a bar in a symphony of ,beethoven4 ,in his dominant aptitudes1 ,mr4 ,carlyle is not more one-sided than many other intellectual potentates2 but1 like some others1 his activity and ambition have at times led him into paths where great deficiencies disclose themselves by the side of great superiorities4 ,his mind is biographical1 not historical2 stronger in details than in generalization2 more intuitive than scientific2 critical1 not constructive2 literary1 not philosophical4 ,mr4 ,carlyle is great at a picture1 very great2 he can fail in a survey or an induction4 ,wealth of thought1 strokes of tenderness1 clean insight into life1 satire1 irony1 humor1 make his least successful volumes to teem with passages noteworthy1 beautiful1 wise1 as do his ,cromwell and his ,frederick4 ,such giants carrying nations on their broad fronts1 ,mr4 ,carlyle1 in writing their lives with duteous particularity1 has embraced the full story of the epoch in which each was the leader4 ,to him they are more than leaders4 ,herein he and ,mr4 ,buckle stand at opposite poles2 ,mr4 ,buckle underrating the protagonists of history1 them and their share of agency2 ,mr4 ,carlyle overrating them1--a prejudicial one-sidedness in both cases4 ,leader and led are the complements the one of the other4 ,history is a growth1 and a slow growth4 ,evils in one age painfully sow the seed that is to come up good in another4 ,the historian1 and still more the critical commentator on his own times1 needs to be patient1 calm1 judicial1 hopeful4 ,mr4 ,carlyle is impatient1 fervid1 willful1 nay1 despotic1 and he is not hopeful1 not hopeful enough4 ,one healthily hopeful1 and genuinely faithful1 would not be ever betaking him to the past as a refuge from the present2 would not tauntingly throw into the face of contemporaries an ,abbot ,sampson of the twelfth century as a model4 ,a judicial expounder would not cite one single example as a characteristic of that age in contrast with this4 ,a patient1 impartial elucidator1 would not deride ballot-boxes1 reform bills1 winnowing machines3 he would make the best of these and other tools within reach2 or1 if his part be to write and not to act1 would animate1 not dishearten1 those who are earnestly doing1 and who1 by boldly striking at abuses1 by steadily striving for more justice1 by aiming to lift up the down-trodden1 prepare1 through such means as are at hand1 a better ground for the next generation4 ,if to such workers1 instead of ,god-speed1 a writer of force and influence gives jeers and gibes1 and ever-repeated shrieks about semblance and quackery1 and cant and speciosity1 and dilettantism1 and deems himself profound and original1 as well as hopeful1 when he exclaims3 ,dim all souls of men to the divine1 the high and awful meaning of human worth and truth1 we shall never by all the machinery in ,birmingham discover the true and worthy3 in that case1 does he not expose him to the taunt of being himself very like a mouthing quack1 and his words1 which should be cordial1 brotherly1 do they not partake of the hollow quality of what ,mr4 ,carlyle holds in such abhorrence1 namely1 of cant8 ,the sick lion crouches growling in his lair2 he cannot eat1 and he will not let others eat4 ,many grateful and admiring readers ,mr4 ,carlyle wearies with his ever-recurrent fallacy that might is right4 ,in ,heaven's name1 what are all the shams whose presence he so persistently bemoans1--worldly bishops1 phantasm-aristocracies1 presumptuous upstarts1 shallow sway-wielding dukes1--what are all these1 and much else1 but so many exemplications of might that is not right8 ,when might shall cease to bully1 to trample on right1 we shall be nearing ,utopia4 ,utopia may be at infinite distance1 not attainable by finite men2 but as surely as our hearts beat1 we are gradually getting further from its opposite1 the coarse rule of force and brutality1 such rule as in the twelfth century was rife all around ,abbot ,sampson4 ,like unto this moral fallacy is an sthetic fallacy which1 through bright pages of criticism1 strikes up at times to vitiate a judgment4 ,i confess1 says ,mr4 ,carlyle1 ,i have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men4 ,could ,newton have written the ,fairy ,queen8 ,could ,spenser have discovered the law of gravitation8 ,could ,columbus have given birth to ,don ,quixote8 ,one of ,mr4 ,carlyle's military heroes tried hard to be a poet4 ,over ,frederick's verses1 how his friend ,voltaire must have grinned4 ,i cannot understand how a ,mirabeau1 with that great glowing heart1 with the fire that was in it1 with the bursting tears that were in it1 could not have written verses1 tragedies1 poems1 and touched all hearts in that way1 had his course of life and education led him thitherward4 ,thus ,mr4 ,carlyle writes in ,heroes and ,hero-,worship4 ,if ,mirabeau1 why not ,savonarola1 or ,marcus ,aurelius4 ,in that case a ,twelfth ,night1 or an ,othello1 might have come from ,luther4 ,nature does not work so loosely4 ,rich is she1 unspeakably rich1 and as artful as she is profuse in the use of her riches4 ,she delights in variety1 thence her ineffable radiance1 and much of her immeasurable efficiency4 ,diverseness in unity is a source of her power as well as of her beauty4 ,her wealth of material being infinite1 her specifications are endless1 countless1 superfinely minute4 ,even no two of the commonest men does she make alike2 her men of genius she diversifies at once grandly and delicately1 broadly and subtly4 ,petrarch and ,boccaccio did diplomatic messages1 says ,mr4 ,carlyle4 ,we hope they did1 or could have done1 in the prosaic field1 much better than that4 ,we ,americans know with what moderate equipment diplomatic messages may be done4 ,on poetry and poets ,mr4 ,carlyle has written many of his best pages1 pages penetrating1 discriminative1 because so sympathetic1 and executed with the scholar's care and the critic's culture4 ,his early papers on ,goethe and ,burns1 published more than forty years ago1 made something like an epoch in ,english criticism4 ,seizing the value and significance of genuine poetry1 he exclaims in ,past and ,present1--,genius1 ,poet6 do we know what these words mean8 ,an inspired soul once more vouchsafed us1 direct from ,nature's own great fire-heart1 to see the truth1 and speak it and do it4 ,on the same page he thus taunts his countrymen3 ,we ,english find a poet1 as brave a man as has been made for a hundred years or so anywhere under the sun2 and do we kindle bonfires1 thank the gods8 ,not at all4 ,we1 taking due counsel of it1 set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the ,burgh of ,dumfries1 and pique ourselves on our 'patronage of genius4' ,george the ,third is ,defender of something we call 'the ,faith' in those years4 ,george the ,third is head charioteer of the destinies of ,england1 to guide them through the gulf of ,french ,revolutions1 ,american ,independences2 and ,robert ,burns is gauger of ale in ,dumfries4 ,poor ,george the ,third6 ,one needs not be a craniologist to know that the eyes which looked out from beneath that retreating pyramidal forehead could see but part even of the commonest men and things before them4 ,how could they see a ,robert ,burns8 ,to be sure1 had ,dundas1 or whoever got ,burns the place of gauger1 given him one of the many sinecures of two or three hundred pounds a year that were wasted on idle scions of titled families1 an aureole of glory would now shine through the darkness that environs the memory of ,george ,,iii4 ,so much for ,george ,guelf4 ,now for ,thomas ,carlyle4 ,if1 for not recognizing ,burns1 poor ,george is to be blamed1 what terms of stricture will be too harsh for rich ,thomas1 that by him were not recognized poets greater than ,burns1 at a time when for ,england's good1 full1 sympathetic recognition of them was just what was literarily most wanted8 ,here was a man1 for the fine function of poetic criticism how rarely gifted is visible in those thorough papers on ,burns and ,goethe1 written so early as #ahbh1 wherein1 besides a masterly setting forth of their great subjects1 are notable passages on other poets4 ,on ,byron is passed the following sentence1 which will1 we think1 be ever confirmed by sound criticism4 ,generally speaking1 we should say that ,byron's poetry is not true4 ,he refreshes us1 not with the divine fountain1 but too often with vulgar strong waters1 stimulating indeed to the taste1 but soon ending in dislike1 or even nausea4 ,are his ,harolds and ,giaours1 we would ask1 real men2 we mean1 poetically consistent and conceivable men8 ,do not these characters1 does not the character of their author1 which more or less shines through them all1 rather appear a thing put on for the occasion2 no natural or possible mode of being1 but something intended to look much grander than nature8 ,surely1 all these stormful agonies1 this volcanic heroism1 superhuman contempt1 and moody desperation1 with so much scowling and teeth-gnashing1 and other sulphurous humor1 is more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy1 which is to last three hours1 than the bearing of a man in the business of life1 which is to last threescore and ten years4 ,to our minds1 there is a taint of this sort1 something which we should call theatrical1 false1 affected1 in every one of these otherwise so powerful pieces4 ,in the same paper1 that on ,burns1 ,mr4 ,carlyle thus opened the ears of that generation1--partially opened1 for the general sthetic ear is not fully opened yet1--to a hollowness which was musical to the many3 ,our ,grays and ,glovers seemed to write almost as if in vacuo2 the thing written bears no mark of place2 it is not written so much for ,englishmen as for men2 or rather1 which is the inevitable result of this1 for certain generalizations which philosophy termed men4 ,and in the paper on ,goethe1 he calls ,gray's poetry1 a laborious mosaic1 through the hard1 stiff lineaments of which1 little life or true grace could be expected to look4 ,thus choicely endowed was ,mr4 ,carlyle to be1 what is the critic's noblest office1 an interpreter between new poets and the public4 ,such an interpreter ,england grievously needed1 to help and teach her educated and scholarly classes to prize the treasures just lavished upon them by ,wordsworth1 and ,coleridge1 and ,shelley1 and ,keats4 ,the interpreter was there1 but he spoke not4 ,better than any man in ,england ,mr4 ,carlyle could1 if he would1 have taught the generation that was growing up with him1 whose ear he had already gained1 what truth and fresh beauty and deep humanity there was in the strains of this composite chorus of superlative singers4 ,of such teaching1 that generation stood in especial need1 to disabuse its ear of the hollowness which had been mistaken for harmony2 to refresh1 with clear streams from the divine fountain1 hearts that were fevered by the stimulus of ,byronic strong waters2 to wave before half-awakened eyes the torch which lights the way to that higher plane where breathe great poets1 whose incomparable function it is1 to impart to their fellow-men some of the enlargement and the purification of consciousness in which themselves exult through the influx of fresh ideas and the upspringing of prolific sentiment4 ,the gifted interpreter was dumb4 ,nay1 he made diversions into ,scotland and ,germany1 to bring ,burns and ,scott more distinctly before ,englishmen1 and to make ,schiller and ,goethe and ,richter better known to them4 ,and it pleased him to write about ,corn-law rhymes4 ,that he did these tasks so well1 proves how well he could have done1 by the side of them1 the then more urgent task4 ,in #ahbh1 ,mr4 ,carlyle wrote for one of the quarterly reviews an exposition of ,goethe's ,helena1 which is a kind of episode in the second part of ,faust1 and was first published as a fragment4 ,this takes up more than sixty pages in the first volume of the ,miscellanies1 about the half being translations from ,helena1 which by no means stands in the front rank of ,goethe's poetic creations1 which is indeed rather a high artistic composition than a creation4 ,at that time there lay1 almost uncalled for1 on the publisher's shelf1 where it had lain for five years1 ever since its issue1 a poem of fifty-five ,spenserian stanzas1 flushed with a subtler beauty1 more divinely dyed in pathos1 than any in ,english literature of its rare kind1 or of any kind out of ,shakespeare1--a poem in which all the inward harvests of a tender1 deep1 capacious1 loving1 and religious life1 all the heaped hoards of feeling and imagination in a life most visionary and most real1 are gathered into one sheaf of poetic affluence1 to dazzle and subdue with excess of light1--or gathered rather into a bundle of sheaves1 stanza rising on stanza1 each like a flame fresh shooting from a hidden bed of ,nature's most precious perfumes1 each shedding a new and a richer fragrance2 ,i mean the ,adonais of ,shelley4 ,for this glittering masterpiece1--a congenial commentary on which would have illuminated the literary atmosphere of ,england1--,mr4 ,carlyle had no word2 no word for ,shelley1 no word for ,coleridge1 no word for ,wordsworth4 ,for ,keats he had a word in the paper on ,burns1 and here it is3 ,poetry1 except in such cases as that of ,keats1 where the whole consists in a weak-eyed1 maudlin sensibility and a certain vague1 random timefulness of nature1 is no separate faculty4 ,a parenthesis1 short and contemptuous1 is all he gives to one of whom it has been truly said1 that of no poet who has lived1 not of ,shakespeare1 is the poetry written before the twenty-fifth year so good as his2 and of whom it may as truly be said1 that his best poems need no apology in the youthfulness of their author2 but that for originality1 power1 variety1 feeling1 thoughtfulness1 melody1 they take rank in the first class of the poetry of the world4 ,is not ,thomas ,carlyle justly chargeable with having committed a high literary misdemeanor8 ,nay1 considering his gift of poetic insight1 and with it his persistent ignoring of the great ,english poets of his age1 considering the warm solicitation on the one side1 and the duty on the other1 his offense may be termed a literary crime4 ,he knew better4 ,mr4 ,carlyle somewhere contrasts his age with that of ,elizabeth1 after this fashion2 ,for ,raleighs and ,shakespeares we have ,beau ,brummell and ,sheridan ,knowles4 ,only on the surmise that ,mr4 ,carlyle owed poor ,knowles some desperate grudge1 can such an outburst be accounted for4 ,otherwise it is sheer fatuity1 or an impotent explosion of literary spite4 ,for the breadth and brilliancy of the poetic day shed upon it1 no period in the history of any nation1 not that of ,pericles or of ,elizabeth1 is more resplendent than that which had not yet faded for ,england when ,mr4 ,carlyle began his career2 nor in the field of public action can the most prolific era of ,greece or of ,england hold up1 for the admiration of the world and the pride of fellow-countrymen1 two agents more deservedly crowned with honor and gratitude than ,nelson and ,wellington4 ,here are two leaders1 who1 besides exhibiting rare personal prowess and quick-eyed military genius on fields of vast breadth1 and in performances of unwonted magnitude and momentousness1 were1 moreover1 by their great1 brave deeds1 most palpably saving ,england1 saving ,europe1 from the grasp of an inexorable despot4 ,surely these were heroes of a stature to have strained to its utmost the reverence and the love of a genuine hero-worshipper4 ,on the ten thousand luminous pages of ,mr4 ,carlyle they find no place4 ,not only are their doings not celebrated1 that they lived is scarce acknowledged4 ,even when its objects are the loftiest and the most honored1 jealousy is not a noble form of ,the last infirmity of noble mind4 ,does ,mr4 ,carlyle feel that ,nelson and ,wellington1 ,coleridge1 ,shelley1 ,keats1 and ,wordsworth1 stand already so broad and high that they chill him with their shadow1 and that therefore he will not1 by eulogy1 or even notice1 add to their altitude8 ,is he repeating the littleness of ,byron1 who was jealous not only of his contemporaries1 ,napoleon1 and ,wellington1 and ,wordsworth1 but was jealous of ,shakespeare8 ,that a pen which1 with zestful animation1 embraces all contemporaneous things1 should be studiously silent about almost every one of the dozen men of genius who illustrate his era1 is a fact so monstrous1 that one is driven to monstrous devices to divulge its motive4 ,in such a case it is impossible to premise to what clouds of self-delusion an imaginative man will not rise4 ,writing of ,thomas ,carlyle1 the last words must not be censorious comments on a weakness2 we all owe too much to his strength2 he is too large a benefactor4 ,despite over-fondness for ,frederick and the like1 and what may be termed a pathological drift towards political despotism1 how many quickening chapters has he not added to the gospel of freedom8 ,flushed are his volumes with generous pulses1 with delicate sympathies4 ,from many a page what cordialities step forth to console and to fortify us2 what divine depths we come upon2 what sudden vistas of sunshine through tempest-shaken shadows2 what bursts of splendor through nebulous mutterings4 ,much has he helped the enfranchisement of the spirit4 ,well do ,i remember the thirst wherewith1 more than thirty years ago1 ,i seized the monthly ,frazer1 to drink of the spiritual waters of ,sartor ,resartus4 ,here was a new spring2 with what stimulating1 exhilarating1 purifying draughts1 did it bubble and sparkle6 ,that picture1 in the beginning1 of the doing and driving 7,thun und ,treiben7 of a city as beheld by ,professor ,teufelsdroeckh from his attic--would one have been surprised to read that on a page of ,shakespeare8 ,a marvelous faculty of speech has ,mr4 ,carlyle2 a gift of saying what he has to say with a ring in the words that makes the thought tingle through your ears4 ,his diction surrounds itself with a magnetic aura1 which seems to float it1 to part it from the paper1 it stands out in such transparent chiar-oscuro4 ,common phrases he refreshes by making them the vehicle for new meanings1 and in the ordering of words he has command of a magical logic4 ,the marrowy vigor in his mind it is that lends such expressiveness1 such nimbleness1 such accent to his sentences1 to his style4 ,mr4 ,carlyle's power comes mainly from his sensibilities4 ,through them he is poetical2 through them there is so much light in his pages4 ,more often from his than from any others1 except those of the major poets1 breaks the sudden1 joyful beam that flames around a thought when it knows itself embraced by a feeling4 ,of humor and of wit1 what an added fund does our language now possess through his pen4 ,the body of criticism1 inclosed in the five volumes of ,miscellanies1 were enough to give their author a lasting name4 ,when one of these papers appeared in the ,edinburgh1 or other review1 it shone1 amid the contributions of the ,jeffreys and ,broughams1 like a guinea in a handful of shillings4 ,the masterpiece of ,mr4 ,carlyle1 and the masterpiece of ,english prose literature1 is his ,french ,revolution1 a rhythmic ,epic without verse4 ,to write those three volumes a man needs have in him a big1 glowing heart1 thus to flood with passionate life all the men and scenes of a momentous volcanic epoch2 a lively1 strong1 intellectual vision he must have1 to grasp in their full reality the multitudinous and diverse facts and incidents so swiftly begotten under the pulsation of millions of contentious brains2 he needs a literary faculty finely artistic1 creatively imaginative1 to enrank the figures of such vast tumultuous scenes1 to depict the actors in each1 to present vividly in clear relief the rapid succession of eventful convulsions4 ,outside of the choice achievements of verse1 is there a literary task of breadth and difficulty that has been done so well8 ,a theme of unusual grandeur and significance is here greatly treated4 ,the foremost literary gift1--nay1 the test whereby to try whether there be any genuine literary gift1--is the power in a writer to impart so much of himself1 that his subject shall stand invested1 or rather1 imbued1 with a life which renews it2 it becomes warmed with a fire from the writer's soul4 ,of this1 the most perfect exhibition is in poetry1 wherein1 by the intensity and fullness of inflammation1 of passion1 is born a something new1 which1 through the strong creativeness of the poet1 has henceforth a rounded being of its own4 ,with this power ,mr4 ,carlyle is highly endowed4 ,not only1 as already said1 does his page quiver with himself2 through the warmth and healthiness of his sympathies1 and his intellectual mastery1 he makes each scene and person in his gorgeous representation of the ,french ,revolution to shine with its own life1 the more brilliantly and truly that this life has been lighted up by his4 ,where in history is there a picture greater than that of the execution of ,louis ,,xvi48 ,with a few strokes how many a vivid portrait does he paint1 and each one vivid chiefly from its faithfulness to personality and to history4 ,and then his full-length1 more elaborated likenesses1 of the king1 of the queen1 of the ,duke of ,orleans1 of ,lafayette1 of ,camille ,desmoulins1 of ,danton1 of ,robespierre3 it seems now that only on his throbbing page do these personages live and move and have their true being4 ,the giant ,mirabeau1 'twas thought at first he had drawn too gigantic4 ,but intimate documents1 historical and biographical1 that have come to light since1 confirm the insight of ,mr4 ,carlyle1 and swell his hero out to the large proportions he has given him4 ,for a conclusion we will let ,mr4 ,carlyle depict himself4 ,making allowance for some humorous play in describing a fellow-man so eccentric as his friend1 ,professor ,teufelsdroeckh1 this we think he does consciously and designedly in the fourth chapter of ,sartor ,resartus1 wherein1 under the head of ,characteristics1 he comments on the professor's ,work on ,clothes1 and its effect on himself4 ,from this chapter we extract some of the most pertinent sentences4 ,it opens thus3-- ,it were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this ,work on ,clothes entirely contents us2 that it is not1 like all works of genius1 like the very sun1 which1 though the highest published creation1 or work of genius1 has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence1--a mixture of insight1 inspiration1 with dullness' double-vision1 and even utter blindness4 ,without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and prophesyings of the ,weissnichtwo'sche ,anzeiger1 we admitted that the book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity1 which is the best effect of any book2 that it had even operated changes in our way of thought2 nay1 that it promised to prove1 as it were1 the opening of a new mine-shaft1 wherein the whole world of ,speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths4 ,more especially it may now be declared that ,professor ,teufelsdroeckh's acquirements1 patience of research1 philosophic1 and even poetic vigor1 are here made indisputably manifest2 and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold inaptitude4444 ,many a deep glance1 and often with unspeakable precision1 has he cast into mysterious ,nature1 and the still more mysterious ,life of man4 ,wonderful it is with what cutting words1 now and then1 he severs asunder the confusion2 sheers down1 were it furlongs deep1 into the true center of the matter2 and there not only hits the nail on the head1 but with crushing force smites it home and buries it4444 ,occasionally1 as above hinted1 we find consummate vigor1 a true inspiration2 his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words1 like so many full-formed ,minervas1 issuing amid flame and splendor from ,jove's head2 a rich idiomatic diction1 picturesque allusions1 fiery poetic emphasis1 or quaint tricksy twins2 all the graces and terrors of a wild imagination1 wedded to the clearest intellect1 alternate in beautiful vicissitude4 ,were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages1 circumlocutions1 repetitions1 touches even of pure doting jargon so often intervene4444 ,a wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man1 like its key-note and regulator2 now screwing itself aloft as into the ,song of ,spirits1 or else the shrill mockery of fiends2 now sinking in cadences1 not without melodious heartiness1 though sometimes abrupt enough1 into the common pitch1 when we hear it only as a monotonous hum2 of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix4444 ,under a like difficulty1 in spite even of our personal intercourse1 do we still lie with regard to the professor's moral feeling4 ,gleams of an ethereal love burst forth from him1 soft wailings of infinite pity2 he could clasp the whole universe into his bosom1 and keep it warm2 it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph4 ,then1 again1 he is so sly1 and still so imperturbably saturnine2 shows such indifference1 malign coolness1 towards all that men strive after2 and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter1 sardonic humor1 if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness1--that you look on him almost with a shudder1 as on some incarnate ,mephistopheles1 to whom this great terrestrial and celestial ,round1 after all1 were but some huge foolish whirligig1 where kings and beggars1 and angels and demons1 and stars and street-sweepings1 were chaotically whirled1 in which only children could take interest4 ,,vii4 ,,errata4#g #g ,from ,lippincott's ,magazine1 #ahgj4 ,words are the counters of thought2 speech is the vocalization of the soul2 style is the luminous incarnation of reason and emotion4 ,thence it behooves scholars1 the wardens of language1 to keep over words a watch as keen and sleepless as a dutiful guardian keeps over his pupils4 ,a prime office of this guardianship is to take care lest language fall into loose ways2 for words being the final elements into which all speech resolves itself1 if they grow weak by negligence or abuse1 speech loses its firmness1 veracity1 and expressiveness4 ,style may be likened to a close ,tyrian garment woven by poets and thinkers out of words and phrases for the clothing and adornment of the mind2 and the strength and fineness of the tissue1 together with its beauties of color1 depend on the purity and precision1 the transparency and directness of its threads1 which are words4 ,a humble freeman of the guild of scholars would here use his privilege to call attention to some abuses in words and phrases1--abuses which are not only prevalent in the spoken and written speech of the many1 but which disfigure1 occasionally1 the pages1 even of good writers4 ,these are not errors that betoken or lead to general final corruption1 and the great ,anglo-,saxo-,norman race is many centuries distant from the period when it may be expected to show signs of that decadence which1 visible at first in the waning moral and intellectual energies of a people1 soon spots its speech4 ,nevertheless1 as inaccuracies1 laxities1 vulgarisms--transgressions more or less superficial--such errors take from the correctness1 from the efficacy1 from the force as well as the grace1 of written or spoken speech4 ,the high level of strength1 suppleness and beauty occupied by our ,english tongue has been reached1 and can only be maintained1 by strenuous1 varied1 and continuous mental action4 ,offenses against the laws and proprieties of language--like so many other of our lapses--are in most cases effects of the tendency in human nature to relax its tone4 ,none save the most resolute and rigorous but have their moods of unwatchfulness1 of indolence4 ,moreover1 men are prone to resist mental refinement and intellectual subdivisions4 ,discrimination requires close attention and sustained effort2 and without habitual discrimination there can be no linguistic precision or excellence4 ,in this1 as in other provinces1 people like to take things easily4 ,now1 every capable man of business knows that to take things easily is an easy way to ruin4 ,language is in a certain sense every one's business2 but it is especially the business1 as their appellation denotes1 of men of letters2 and a primary duty of their high vocation is to be jealous of any careless or impertinent meddling with1 or mishandling of1 those little glistening1 marvelous tools wherewith such amazing structures and temples have been built and are ever a-building4 ,culture1 demanding and creating diversity and subtlety of mental processes1 is at once a cause and an effect of infinite multiplication in the relations the mind is capable of establishing between itself and the objects of its action1 and between its own processes2 and language1 being a chief instrument of culture1 has to follow and subserve these multiplied and diversified demands1 ,any fall1 therefore1 on its part from the obedient fineness of its modes and modulations back into barbaric singleness and crudeness1 any slide into looseness or vagueness1 any unweaving of the complex tissue1 psychical and metaphysical1 into which it has been wrought by the exquisite wants of the mind1 will have a relaxing1 debilitating influence on thought itself4 ,to use the clear1 wise words of ,mr4 ,whewell2 ,language is often called an instrument of thought1 but it is also the nutriment of thought2 or1 rather1 it is the atmosphere on which thought lives--a medium essential to the activity of our speculative powers1 although invisible and imperceptible in its operation2 and an element modifying1 by its changes and qualities1 the growth and complexion of the faculties which it feeds4 ,our enumeration of errata being made alphabetically1 the first to be cited is one of the chief of sinners--the particle4 ,as4 ,the misuse of as for so is1 in certain cases1 almost universal4 ,if authority could justify error and convert the faulty into the faultless1 it were idle to expose a misuse in justification of which can be cited most of the best names in recent ,english literature4 ,as far as doth concern my single self1 is a line in ,wordsworth 7,prelude1 p4 #gj7 which1 by a change of the first as into so1 would gain not only in sound 7which is not our affair at present71 but1 likewise in grammar4 ,the seventh line of the twenty-first stanza in that most tender of elegies and most beautiful of poems1 ,shelley's ,adonais1 begins1 ,as long as skies are blue1 where also there would be a double gain by writing ,so long as skies are blue4 ,on page #bdb of the first volume of ,de ,quincey's ,literary ,remains occurs this sentence2 ,even by as philosophic a politician as ,edmund ,burke1 in which the critical blunder of calling ,burke a philosophic politician furnishes no excuse for the grammatical blunder4 ,the rule 7derived1 like all good rules1 from principle7 which determines the use of this small particle is1 ,i conceive1 that the double as should only be employed when there is direct comparison4 ,in the first part of the following sentence there is no direct comparative relation--in the second1 the negative destroys it2 ,so far as geographical measurement goes1 ,philadelphia is not so far from ,new ,york as from ,baltimore4 ,five writers out of six would commit the error of using as in both members of the sentence4 ,the most prevalent misuse of as is in connection with soon2 and this general misuse1 having moreover the countenance of good writers1 is so inwoven into our speech that it will be hard to unravel it4 ,but principle is higher than the authority derived from custom4 ,judges are bound to give sentence according to the statute2 and if the highest writers1 whose influence is deservedly judicial1 violate the laws of language1 their decisions ought to be1 and will be1 reversed1 or language will be undermined1 and1 slipping into shallow1 illogical habits1 into anarchical conditions1 will forfeit much of its manliness1 of its subtlety1 of its truthfulness4 ,language is a living organism1 and to substitute authority1 or even long usage1 for its innate genius and wisdom1 and the requirements and practices that result from these1 were to strike at its life1 and to expose it to become subject to upstart usurpation1 to deadening despotism4 ,worcester quotes from the ,psalms the phrase1 ,they go astray as soon as they be born4 ,we ask1 ,were not the translators of the ,bible as liable to err in grammar as ,de ,quincey1 or ,wordsworth1 or ,shelley8 ,a writer in the ,english ,national ,review for ,january1 #ahfb1 in an admirable paper on the ,italian ,clergy and the ,pope1 begins a sentence with the same phrase3 ,as soon as the law was passed4 ,and we ourselves1 sure though we be that the use of as in this and every similar position is an error1 need to brace both pen and tongue against running into it1 so strong to overcome principle and conviction is the habit of the senses1 accustomed daily to see and to hear the wrong4 ,,at ,,that4 ,we should not have noticed this squat vulgarism1 had not the pen blazoned its own depravity by lifting it out of newspapers into bound volumes4 ,the speech and page of every one1 who would not be italicized for lingual looseness1 should be forever closed against a phrase so shocking to taste1 a phrase1 we are sorry to say1 of ,american mintage1 coined in one of those frolicksome exuberant moods1 when a young people1 like a loosed horse full of youth and oats1 kicks up and scatters mud with the unharnessed license of his heels4 ,,another4 ,before passing to the letter ,b on our alphabetical docket1 we will call up a minor criminal in ,a1 viz4 another1 often incorrectly used for other2 as in on one ground or another1 from one cause or another4 ,now1 another1 the prefix an making it singular1--embraces but one ground or cause1 and therefore1 contrary to the purpose of the writer1 the words mean that there are but two grounds or causes4 ,write on one ground or other1 and the words are in harmony with the meaning of the writer1 the word other implying several or many grounds4 ,,boquet4 ,the sensibility that gives the desire to preserve a present sparkling so long as is possible with all the qualities that made it materially acceptable1 should rule us where the gift is something so precious as a word2 and when we receive one from another people1 gratitude1 as well as sense of grace in the form of the gift itself1 should make us watchful that it be not dimmed by the boorish breath of ignorance or cacophanized by unmusical voices4 ,we therefore protest against a useful and tuneful noun-substantive1 a native of ,france1 the word bouquet1 being maimed into boquet1 a corruption as dissonant to the ear as were to the eye plucking a rose from a variegated nosegay1 and leaving only its thorny stem4 ,boquet is heard at times in well-upholstered drawing-rooms1 and may even be seen in print4 ,offensive in its mutilated shape1 it smells sweet again when restored to its native orthography4 ,,by ,,no ,,manner ,,of ,,means4 ,the most vigorous writers are liable1 in unguarded moments1 to lapse into verbal weakness1 and so you meet with this vulgar pleonasm in ,ruskin4 ,,by ,,reason ,,of4 ,an ill-assorted1 ugly phrase1 used by accomplished reviewers and others1 who ought to set a purer example4 ,,come ,,off4 ,were a harp to give out the nasal whine of the bagpipe1 or the throat of a nightingale to emit the caw of a raven1 the sthetic sense would not be more startled and offended than to hear from feminine lips1 rosily wreathed by beauty and youth1 issue the words1 ,the concert will come off on ,wednesday4 ,this vulgarism should never be heard beyond the ring and the cock-pit1 and should be banished from resorts so respectable as an oyster-cellar4 ,,consider4 ,neither weight of authority nor universality of use can purify or justify a linguistic corruption1 and make the intrinsically wrong in language right2 and therefore such phrases as1 ,i consider him an honest man1 ,do you consider the dispute settled8 will ever be bad ,english1 however generally sanctioned4 ,in his dedication of the ,diversions of ,purley to the ,university of ,cambridge1 ,horne ,tooke uses it wrongly when he says1 who always considers acts of voluntary justice toward himself as favors4 ,the original signification and only proper use of consider are in phrases like these3 ,if you consider the matter carefully2 ,consider the lilies of the field4 ,,conduct4 ,it seems to us that it were as allowable to say of a man1 ,he carries well1 as ,he conducts well4 ,we say of a gun that it carries well1 and we might say of a pipe that it conducts well4 ,the gun and pipe are passive instruments1 not living organisms1 and thence the verbs are used properly in the neuter form4 ,perhaps1 strictly speaking1 even here its charge and water are understood4 ,,contemplate4 ,do you contemplate going to ,washington to-morrow8 ,no3 ,i contemplate moving into the country4 ,this is more than exaggeration and inflation3 it is desecration of a noble word1 born of man's higher being2 for contemplation is an exercise of the very highest faculties1 a calm collecting of them for silent meditation--an act1 or rather a mood1 which implies even more than concentrated reflection1 and involves themes dependent on large1 pure sentiment4 ,an able lawyer has to reflect much upon a broad1 difficult case in order to master it2 but when in the solitude of his study he is drawn1 by the conflicts and wrongs he has witnessed during the day1 to think on the purposes and destiny of human life1 he more than reflects--he is lifted into a contemplative mood4 ,archbishop ,trench1 in his valuable volume on the ,study of ,words1 opens a paragraph with this sentence3 ,let us now proceed to contemplate some of the attestations for ,god's truth1 and some of the playings into the hands of the devil's falsehood1 which may be found to lurk in words4 ,here we suggest that the proper word were consider2 for there is activity1 and a progressive activity1 in the mental operation on which he enters1 which disqualifies the verb contemplate4 ,habitual showiness in language1 as in dress and manners1 denotes lack of discipline or lack of refinement4 ,our ,american magniloquence--the tendency to which is getting more and more subdued--comes partly from national youthfulness1 partly from license1 that bastard of liberty1 and partly from the geographical and the present1 and still more the prospective1 political grandeur of the country1 which ,coleridge somewhere says is to be ,england in glorious magnification4 ,i ,,am ,,free ,,to ,,confess4 ,an irredeemable vulgarism4 ,,in ,,this ,,connection4 ,another4 ,,indebtedness4 ,the amount of my engagedness sounds as well and is as proper as the amount of my indebtedness4 ,we have already hard-heartedness1 wickedness1 composedness1 and others4 ,nevertheless1 this making of nouns out of adjectives with the participial form is an irruption over the boundaries of the parts of speech which should not be encouraged4 ,archbishop ,whately1 in a passage of his shortcoming comments on ,bacon's ,essays1 uses preparedness4 ,albeit that brevity is a cardinal virtue in writing1 a circumlocution would1 we think1 be better than a gawky word like this1 so unsteady on its long legs4 ,in favor of indebtedness over others of like coinage1 this is to be said--that it imports that which in one form or other comes home to the bosom of all humanity4 ,,intellects4 ,that man's intellectual power is not one and indivisible1 but consists of many separate1 independent faculties1 is a momentous truth1 revealed by the insight of ,gall4 ,one of the results of this great discovery may at times underlie the plural use of the important word intellect when applied to one individual4 ,if so1 it were still indefensible4 ,it has1 we suspect1 a much less philosophic origin1 and proceeds from the unsafe practice of overcharging the verbal gun in order to make more noise in the ear of the listener4 ,the plural is correctly used when we speak of two or more different men4 ,,left4 ,i left at ten o'clock4 ,this use of leave as a neuter verb1 however attractive from its brevity1 is not defensible4 ,to leave off is the only proper neuter form4 ,we left off at six1 and left 7the hall7 at a quarter past six4 ,the place should be inserted after the second left4 ,even the first is essentially active1 some form of action being understood after off3 we left off work or play4 ,,midst4 ,in our midst is a common but incorrect phrase4 ,,our ,,author4 ,a vulgarism1 which1 by its seeming convenience1 gets the countenance of critical writers4 ,we say seeming convenience2 for in this seeming lies the vulgarity1 the writer expressing1 unconsciously often1 by the our1 a feeling of patronage4 ,with his our he pats the author on the back4 ,,periodical is an adjective1 and its use as a substantive is an unwarrantable gain of brevity at the expense of grammar4 ,,propose4 ,hardly any word that we have cited is so frequently misused1 and by so many good writers1 as propose1 when the meaning is to design1 to intend to propose4 ,it should always be followed by a personal accusative--,i propose to you1 to him1 to myself4 ,in the preface to ,hawthorne's ,marble ,faun occurs the following sentence2 ,the author proposed to himself merely to write a fanciful story1 evolving a thoughtful moral1 and did not purpose attempting a portraiture of ,italian manners and character--a sentence than which a fitter could not be written to illustrate the proper use of propose and purpose4 ,,predicated ,,upon4 ,this abomination is paraded by persons who lose no chance of uttering dictionary words1 hit or miss2 and is sometimes heard from others from whom the educated world has a right to look for more correctness4 ,,reliable4 ,a counterfeit1 which no stamping by good writers or universality of circulation will ever be able to introduce into the family circle of honest ,english as a substitute for the robust ,saxon word whose place it would usurp--trustworthy4 ,reliable is1 however1 good ,english when used to signify that one is liable again4 ,when you have lost a receipt1 and cannot otherwise prove that a bill rendered has been paid1 you are re-liable for the amount4 ,,religion4 ,even by scholars this word is often used with looseness4 ,in strictness it expresses exclusively our relation to the ,infinite1 the bond between man and ,god4 ,you will sometimes read that he is the truly religious man who most faithfully performs his duties of neighbor1 father1 son1 husband1 citizen4 ,however much a religious man may find himself strengthened by his faith and inspirited for the performance of all his duties1 this strength is an indirect1 and not a uniform or necessary1 effect of religious convictions4 ,some men who are sincere in such convictions fail in these duties conspicuously2 while1 on the other hand1 they are performed1 at times1 with more than common fidelity by men who do not carry within them any very lively religious belief or impressions4 ,and now abideth faith1 hope1 and charity1 these three2 but the greatest of these is charity4 ,nor can the greatest do the work of the others any more than faith that of hope or charity4 ,each one of these three is different from and independent of the other1 however each one be aided by cooperation from the others4 ,the deep1 unique feeling which lifts up and binds the creature to the ,creator is elementarily one in the human mind1 and the word used to denote it should be kept solely for this high office1 and not weakened or perverted by other uses4 ,worcester quotes from ,dr4 ,watts the following sound definition3 ,in a proper sense1 virtue signifies duty toward men1 and religion duty to ,god4 ,,saloon4 ,that eminent pioneer of ,american sculpture1 brilliant talker1 and accomplished gentleman1 the lamented ,horatio ,greenough1 was indignantly eloquent against the ,american abuse of this graceful importation from ,france1 applied as it is in the ,united ,states to public billiard-rooms1 oyster-cellars and grog-shops4 ,,subject-,,matter4 ,a tautological humpback4 ,,to ,,ventilate1 applied to a subject or person4 ,the scholar who should use this vilest of vulgarisms deserves to have his right thumb taken off4 ,we have here noted a score of the errors prevalent in written and spoken speech--some of them perversions or corruptions1 countenanced even by eminent writers2 some1 misapplications that weaken and disfigure the style of him who adopts them2 and some1 downright vulgarisms--that is1 phrases that come from below1 and are thrust into clean company with the odors of slang about them4 ,these last are often a device for giving piquancy to style4 ,against such abuses we should be the more heedful1 because1 from the convenience of some of them1 they get so incorporated into daily speech as not to be readily distinguishable from their healthy neighbors1 clinging for generations to tongues and pens4 ,of this tenacity there is a notable exemplification in a passage of ,boswell1 written nearly a hundred years ago4 ,dr4 ,johnson found fault with ,boswell for using the phrase to make money3 ,don't you see the impropriety of it8 ,to make money is to coin it3 you should say get money4 ,johnson1 adds ,boswell1 was jealous of infractions upon the genuine ,english language1 and prompt to repress colloquial barbarisms2 such as pledging myself1 for undertaking2 line for department or branch1 as the civil line1 the banking line4 ,he was particularly indignant against the almost universal use of the word idea in the sense of notion or opinion1 when it is clear that idea can only signify something of which an image can be formed in the mind4 ,we may have an idea or image of a mountain1 a tree1 a building1 but we surely cannot have an idea or image of an argument or proposition4 ,yet we hear the sages of the law 'delivering their ideas upon the question under consideration2' and the first speakers of ,parliament 'entirely coinciding in the idea which has been ably stated by an honorable member4' ,whether or not the word idea may be properly used in a deeper or grander sense than that stated by ,dr4 ,johnson1 there is no doubt that he justly condemned its use in the cases cited by him1 and in similar ones4 ,all the four phrases make money1 pledge1 line1 and idea1 whereupon sentence of guilty was passed by the great lexicographer1 are still at large1 and1 if it be not a bull to say so1 more at large to-day than in the last century1 since the area of their currency has been extended to ,america1 ,australia1 and the ,pacific ,islands4 ,,viii4 ,a ,,national ,,drama4#h #h ,from ,putnam's ,monthly1 #aheg4 ,we are eminently a people of action2 we are fond of shows1 processions1 and organized spectacles2 we are so much more imitative than our ,british cousins1 that1 without limiting its appeals to the mimetic files of fashion1 the ungentlemanly theory of a ,simian descent for man might find support in the features of our general life4 ,to complete the large compound of qualities that are required1 in order that an emulous people give birth to a drama1 one is yet wanting2 but that one is not merely the most important of all1 but is the one which lifts the others into dramatic importance4 ,are we poetical8 ,ask any number of continental ,europeans1 whether the ,english are a poetical people4 ,a loud1 unanimous1 derisive no would be the answer4 ,and yet1 there is ,shakespeare6 and around him1 back to ,chaucer and forward to ,tennyson1 a band of such poets1 that this prosaic nation has the richest poetic literature in ,christendom4 ,especially in this matter are appearances delusive1 and hasty inferences liable to be illogical4 ,from the prosers that one hears in pulpits1 legislatures1 lecture-rooms1 at morning calls and well-appointed dinner-tables in ,anglo-,america1 let no man infer against our poetic endowment4 ,shakespeare1 and ,milton1 and ,burns1 and ,wordsworth1 are of our stock2 and what we have already done in poetry and the plastic arts1 while yet1 as a nation1 hardly out of swaddling-clothes1 is an earnest of a creative future4 ,we are to have a national literature and a national drama4 ,what is a national drama8 ,premising that as little in their depth as in their length will our remarks be commensurate with the dimensions of this great theme1 we would say a few words4 ,a literature is the expression of what is warmest and deepest in the heart of a people4 ,good books are the crystallization of thoughts and feelings4 ,to have a literature--that is1 a body of enduring books--implies vigor and depth4 ,such books are the measure of the mental vitality in a people4 ,those peoples that have the best books will be found to be at the top of the scale of humanity2 those that have none1 at the bottom4 ,good books1 once brought forth1 exhale ever after both fragrance and nourishment4 ,they educate while they delight many generations4 ,good books are the best thoughts of the best men4 ,they issue out of deep hearts and strong heads2 and where there are deep hearts and strong heads such books are sure to come to life4 ,the mind1 like the body1 will reproduce itself3 the mind1 too1 is procreative1 transmitting itself to a remote posterity4 ,the best books are the highest products of human effort4 ,themselves the evidence of creative power1 they kindle and nourish power4 ,consider what a spring of life to ,european people have been the books of the ,hebrews4 ,what so precious treasure has ,england as ,shakespeare8 ,to be good1 books must be generic4 ,they may be1 in subject1 in tone1 and in color1 national2 but in substance they must be so universally human1 that other cognate nations can imbibe and be nourished by them4 ,not that1 in their fashioning1 this fitness for foreign minds is to be a conscious aim2 but to be thus attractive and assimilative1 is a proof of their breadth and depth--of their high humanity4 ,the peoples who earliest reached the state of culture which is needed to bring forth books1 each standing by itself1 each necessarily sang and wrote merely of itself4 ,thus did the ,hebrews and the ,greeks4 ,but already the ,romans went out of themselves1 and ,virgil takes a ,trojan for his hero4 ,this appropriation of foreign material shows that the aim of high books is1 to ascend to the sphere of ideas and feelings that are independent of time and place4 ,thence1 when1 by multiplication of ,christian nations our mental world had become vastly enlarged1 embracing in one bond of culture1 not only all modern civilized peoples1 but also the three great ancient ones1 the poets--especially the dramatic1 for reasons that will be presently stated--looked abroad and afar for the frame-work and corporeal stuff of their writings4 ,the most universal of all writers1 ancient or modern1 he who is most generic in his thought1 ,shakespeare1 embodied his transcendent conceptions for the most part in foreign personages4 ,of ,shakespeare's fourteen comedies1 the scene of only one is laid in ,england2 and that one1 ,the ,merry ,wives of ,windsor--the only one not written chiefly or largely in verse--is a ,shakespearean farce4 ,of the tragedies 7except the series of the ten historical ones7 only two1 ,lear and ,macbeth1 stand on ,british ground4 ,is ,hamlet on that score less ,english than ,lear1 or ,othello than ,macbeth8 ,does ,italy count ,juliet among her trophies1 or ,desdemona8 ,of ,milton's two dramas---to confine myself here to the dramatic domain--the tragedy 7,samson ,agonistes17 like his epics1 is ,biblical2 the comedy 7,comus7 has its home in a sphere ,above the smoke and stir of this dim spot ,which men call earth4 ,of the numerous athletic corps of dramatists1 contemporary with ,shakespeare and ,milton1 few have left works pithy enough and so poetically complete as to withstand the wear of time and keep fresh to each successive generation4 ,but if you inspect the long list from which ,charles ,lamb took his ,specimens1 you will find few ,british names4 ,casting our eyes on the dramatic efforts of the recent ,english poetic celebrities1 we perceive that ,byron1 ,coleridge1 and ,shelley1 all abandoned1 in every instance1 native ground4 ,the only dramatic work of a great modern1 the scene of which is laid within the ,british limits1 is ,the ,borderers1 of ,wordsworth1 which1 though having the poetic advantage of remoteness in time--being thrown back to the reign of ,henry ,,iii4--is1 in strictness1 neither a drama nor a poem1 ,wordsworth's deficiency in dramatic gifts being so signal as to cause1 by the impotent struggle in an uncongenial element1 a partial paralysis even of his high poetic genius4 ,glance now across the ,channel4 ,french poetic tragedy is in its subjects almost exclusively ancient--,greek1 ,roman1 and ,biblical4 ,in the works of the great comic genius of ,france1 ,molire1 we have a salient exception to the practice of all other eminent dramatists4 ,the scene of his plays is ,paris2 the time is the year in which each was written4 ,let us look for the cause of this remarkable isolation4 ,molire was the manager of a theatrical company in the reign of ,louis ,,xiv41 and he wrote1 as he himself declares1 to please the king and amuse the ,parisians4 ,but deeper than this2 ,molire was by nature a great satirist4 ,i call him a great satirist1 because of the affluence of inward substance that fed his satiric appetite--namely1 a clear1 moral sensibility1 distinguishing by instinct the true from the false1 rare intellectual nimbleness1 homely common sense1 shrewd insight into men1 a keen wit1 with vivid perception of the comic and absurd4 ,for a satirist so variously endowed1 the stage was the best field1 and for ,molire especially1 gifted as he was with histrionic genius4 ,the vices and abuses1 the follies and absurdities1 the hypocrisies and superficialities of civilized life1 these were the game for his faculties4 ,the interior of ,paris households he transferred to the stage with biting wit1 doubling the attractiveness of his pictures by comic hyperbole4 ,his portraits are caricatures1 not because they exaggerate vices or foibles1 but because they so bloat out a single personage with one vice or one folly as to make him a lop-sided deformity4 ,characters he did not seek to draw1 but he made a personage the medium of incarnating a quality4 ,harpagon is not a miser2 he is ,avarice speaking and doing4 ,alceste is not a person2 he is ,misanthropy personified4 ,this fundamental exaggeration led to and facilitated the caricature of relations and juxtapositions4 ,with laughable unscrupulousness ,molire multiplies improbable blunders and conjunctions4 ,all verisimilitude is sacrificed to scenic vivacity4 ,hence1 the very highest of his comedies are farce-like2 even ,tartuffe is so4 ,in ,molire little dramatic growth goes on before the spectator's eye4 ,his personages are not gradually built up by successive touches1 broad or fine2 they do not evolve themselves chiefly by collision with others2 in the first act they come on the stage unfolded4 ,the action and plot advance rapidly1 but not through the unrolling of the persons represented4 ,hence1 his most important personages are prosaic and finite4 ,they interest you more as agents for the purpose in hand than as men and women4 ,they are subordinate rather to the action than creative of action4 ,molire is a most thorough realist1 and herein is his strength4 ,in him the comic is a vehicle for satire2 and the satire gives pungency and body to the comic4 ,he was primarily a satirist1 secondarily a poet4 ,such being his powers and his aims1 helpful to him1 nay1 needful1 was a present ,parisian actuality of story and agents4 ,a poetic comedy ought to be1 and will necessarily be1 a chapter of very high life4 ,molire's comedies1 dealing unctuously with vice and folly1 are1 philosophically speaking1 low life4 ,his are comedies not of character and sentiment1 but of manners and morals1 and therefore cannot be highly poetical2 and thence he felt no want of a remote ground1 clean of all local coloring and association1 such as is essential to the dramatist whose inspiration is poetical1 and who therefore must reconcile the ideal with the real1 by which reconciliation only can be produced the purest truth4 ,that1 notwithstanding they belong not to the highest poetic sphere1 his comedies continue to live and to be enjoyed1 this testifies of the breadth and truthfulness of his humanity1 the piercing insight of his rich mind1 and his superlative comic genius4 ,of ,alfieri's twenty-two tragedies1 three only are modern1 and of these three the scene of one is in ,spain4 ,of the nine or ten tragedies of the foremost ,german dramatic poet1 ,schiller1 three are ,german1 ,the ,robbers1 ,intrigue and ,love1 and ,wallenstein4 ,goethe's highest dramas1 ,iphigenia1 ,egmont1 ,torquato ,tasso1 are all foreign in clothing4 ,the ,natural ,daughter has no local habitation1 no dependence on time or place4 ,goetz von ,berlichingen1 written in ,goethe's earliest days of authorship1 is ,german and in prose1 ,faust--the greatest poem of these latter times1 and rivaling the greatest poems of all time--,faust is not strictly a drama3 its wonderful successive scenes are not bound together by dramatic necessity4 ,the drama of ,spain1 like the comedies of ,molire1 is an exception to the rule we deduce from the practice of other dramatists2 but it is an exception which1 like that of ,molire1 confirms the rule4 ,unlike the ancient ,greek and the ,french tragic poets1 unlike ,schiller1 ,shakespeare1 ,goethe1 ,alfieri1 the ,spanish dramatists do not aim at ideal humanity4 ,the best of them1 ,calderon1 is so intensely ,spanish and ,romish1 as to be1 in comparison with the breadth and universality of his eminent compeers above named1 almost provincial4 ,his personages are not large and deep enough to be representative4 ,the manifold recesses of great minds he does not unveil2 he gets no deeper than the semi-barbarous exaggerations of selfish1 passionate love2 of revenge1 honor1 and jealousy4 ,his characterization is weak4 ,his highest characters lack intellectual calibre1 and are exhibited in lyrical one-sidedness rather than dramatic many-sidedness4 ,he is mostly content with ,spanish cavaliers of the seventeenth century1 ruled by the conventionalisms in manners1 morals1 and superstition1 which have already passed away even in ,spain4 ,he is a marvelously fertile1 skillful1 poetic playwright4 ,thus we perceive that1 with poetic dramatists1 the prevailing practice is1 to look abroad for fables4 ,moreover1 in the cases where these were drawn from the bosom of the poet's own people1 he shuns the present1 and hies as far back as he can into the dark abysms of time1 as ,shakespeare does in ,macbeth and ,lear4 ,the ,greek tragic poets1 having no outward resource1 took possession of the fabulous era of ,greece4 ,the poetic dramatist seeks mostly a double remoteness1 that of place as well as that of time2 and he must have one or the other4 ,the law lying behind this phenomenon is transparent4 ,the higher poetry is1 the more generic it is4 ,its universality is a chief constituent of its excellence4 ,the drama is the most generically human1 and1 therefore1 the highest of the great forms of poetry4 ,the epic deals with the material1 the outward--humanity concreted into events2 the lyric with the inward1 when that is so individual and intense as to gush out in ode or song4 ,the dramatic is the union of the epic and lyric--the inward moulding the outward1 predominant over the outward while co-working with it4 ,in the dramatic1 the action is more made by the personality2 in the epic1 the personality is more merged in the strong1 full stream of events4 ,the lyric is the utterance of one-sided1 partial 7however deep and earnest7 feeling1 the which must be linked to other feelings to give wholeness to the man and his actions4 ,the dramatic combines several lyrics with the epic4 ,out of humanity and human action it extracts the essence4 ,it presents men in their completest form1 in warm activity1 impelled thereto by strongest feelings4 ,hence1 it must be condensed and compact1 and must1 for its highest display1 get rid of local coloring1 personal associations1 and all prosaic circumscriptions4 ,the poetic dramatist needs the highest poetic freedom1 and only through this can he attain to that breadth and largeness whereof the superiority of his form admits1 and which are such in ,shakespeare1 that in his greatest plays the whole world seems to be present as spectators and listeners4 ,observe that the highest dramatic literatures belong to the two freest peoples--the ,greeks and the ,english4 ,a people1 possessing already a large political freedom1 must be capable of1 and must be in the act of1 vigorous1 rich development1 through deep inward passion and faculty1 in order that its spirit shall issue in the perennial flowers of the poetic drama4 ,the dramatic especially implies and demands variety and fullness and elevation of personality2 and this is only possible through freedom1 the attainment of which freedom implies on its side the innate fertility of nature which results in fullness and elevation4 ,now in the subjective elevation of the individual1 and therewith the unprecedented relative number of individuals thus elevated1 herein do we exceed all other peoples4 ,by subjective elevation ,i mean1 liberation from the outward1 downward pressure of dogmatic prescription1 of imperious custom1 of blindfolded tradition1 of irresponsible authority4 ,the despotic objectivity of ,asia--where religion is submissiveness1 and manhood is crushed by obedience--has been partially withstood in ,europe4 ,the emancipation therefrom of the ,indo-,germanic race is completed in ,anglo-,america4 ,through this manifold emancipation we are to be1 in all the high departments of human achievement1 preeminently creative1 because1 while equipped with the best of the past1 we are at the same time preeminently subjective2 and1 therefore1 high literature will1 with us1 necessarily take the lyrical1 and especially the dramatic1 form4 ,more than our ,european ancestors1 we mold1 each one of us1 our own destiny2 we have a stronger inward sense of power to unfold and elevate ourselves2 we are more ready and more capable to withstand the assaults of circumstance4 ,here is more thoroughly embodied the true ,christian principle1 that out of himself is to come every man's redemption2 that the favor and help of ,god are only to be obtained through resolute self-help1 and honest1 earnest struggle4 ,in ,christendom we stand alone as having above us neither the objectivity of politics nor that of the church4 ,the light of the past we have1 without its darkness4 ,we carry little weight from the exacting past4 ,hence1 our unexampled freedom and ease of movement which1 wanting the old conventional ballast1 to ,europeans seems lawless and reckless4 ,even among ourselves1 many tremble for our future1 because they have little faith in humanity1 and because they cannot grasp the new1 grand historic phenomenon of a people possessing all the principles1 practices1 and trophies of civilization without its paralyzing incumbrances4 ,but think not1 because we are less passive to destiny1 we are rebellious against ,deity2 because we are boldly self-reliant1 we are1 therefore1 irreligiously defiant4 ,the freer a people is1 the nearer it is to ,god4 ,the more subjective it is1 through acquired self-rule1 the more will it harmonize with the high objectivity of absolute truth and justice4 ,for having thrown off the capricious secondary rule of man1 we shall not be the less1 but the more1 under the steadfast1 primary rule of ,god2 for having broken the force of human1 fallible prescription1 we shall the more feel and acknowledge the supremacy of flawless1 divine law2 for having rejected the tyranny of man's willfulness1 we shall submit the more fully to the beneficent power of principle4 ,our birth1 growth1 and continued weal1 depending on large1 deep principles--principles deliberately elaborated and adopted by reason1 and generously embracing the whole--our life must be interpenetrated by principle1 and thence our literature must embrace the widest and most human wants and aspirations of man4 ,and thus1 it will be our privilege and our glory to be then the most national in our books when we are the most universal4 ,,ix4 ,,usefulness ,,of ,,art4 ,,address ,,delivered ,,at ,,the ,,inauguration ,,of ,,the ,,rhode ,,island ,,art ,,association ,,in ,,providence1 ,,september #d1 #ahed4 ,gentlemen of the ,rhode ,island ,art ,association3-- ,we are met to inaugurate an ,association whose aim and end shall be the encouragement and culture of ,art4 ,a most high end--among the highest that men can attempt2 an end that never can be entertained except by men of the best breed4 ,there is no art among savages1 none among barbarians4 ,barbarism and art are adversary terms4 ,when men capable of civilization ascend into it1 art manifests itself an inevitable accompaniment1 an indispensable aid to human development4 ,i will say further1 that in a people the capacity to be cultivated involves the capacity1 nay1 the necessity of art4 ,and still further1 that those nations that have been or are preeminent on the earth1 are preeminent in art4 ,nay1 more1 that a nation cannot attain to and maintain eminence without being proficient in art2 and that to abstract from a people its artists were not merely to pluck the flowers from its branches2 it were to cut off its-deep roots4 ,who is the artist8 ,he who embodies1 in whatever mode1--so that they be visible or audible1 and thus find entrance to the mind1--conceptions of the beautiful1 is an artist4 ,the test and characteristic of the artistic nature are superior sensibility to the beautiful4 ,unite to this the faculties and the will to give form to the impressions and emotions that are the fruit of this susceptibility1 and you have the artist4 ,whether he shall embody his conception in written verse1 in marble1 in stone1 in sound1 on the canvas1 that will depend on each one's individual aptitudes4 ,generic1 common1 indispensable to all is the superior sensibility to the beautiful4 ,in this lies the essence of the artist4 ,the beautiful and the perfect being1 if not identical1 in closest consanguinity1 the artist's is an important1 a great function4 ,the artist must receive into his mind1 or engender in his mind's native richness1 conceptions of what is most high1 most perfect1 most beautiful in shape or sound1 in thought or feeling2 and producing it before his fellow-men1 appeal to their sensibility to the beautiful1 to their deepest sympathies1 to their capacity of being moved by the grandest and the noblest there is in man and nature4 ,truly1 a mighty part is that of the artist4 ,artists are the educators of humanity4 ,tutors and professors instruct princes and kings1 but poets 7and all genuine artists are poets7 educate nations4 ,take from ,greece ,homer and ,phidias1 and ,sophocles and ,scopas1 and the planner of the ,parthenon1 and you efface ,greece from history4 ,wanting them1 she would not have been the great ,greece that we know2 she would not have had the vigor of sap1 the nervous vitality1 to have continued to live in a remote posterity1 immortal in the culture1 the memories1 and the gratitude of men4 ,so great1 so far-stretching1 so undying is the power of this exalted class of men1 that it were hardly too much to say that had ,homer and ,phidias never lived1 we should not be here today4 ,if this be deemed extravagant1 with confidence ,i affirm that but for the existence of the greatest artist the world has ever known1--of him who may be called the chief educator of ,england1--but for ,shakespeare1 we assuredly should not be here to-day doing the good work we are doing4 ,there are probably some of this company who1 like myself1 having had the good fortune to be in ,london at the time of the world's fair1 stood under that magnificent1 transparent roof1 trod that immense area whereon fifty thousand people moved at ease4 ,it was a privilege1--the memory of which will last a life-time1 to have been admitted into that gigantic temple of industry1 there to behold in unimaginable profusion and variety the product of man's labor1 intellect1 and genius1 gathered from the four corners of the earth into one vast1 gorgeous pile1--a spectacle peerless from its mere material splendor1 and from its moral significance absolutely sublime4 ,on entering by the chief portal into the transept1--covering in the huge oaks of ,hyde ,park1--the ,american1 after wondering for a moment in the glare of the first aspect1 will1 with the eagerness and perhaps the vanity of his nation1--have hastened through the compartments of ,france1 ,belgium1 ,germany1 gorgeous with color1 glistening with gold4 ,he will have hastened1 hard as it was to hurry through such a show1 in order to reach at once the far eastern end of the palace where a broad area had been allotted to the ,united ,states1--,jonathan1 as is his wont1 having helped himself largely4 ,great was the ,american's disappointment1 cutting was the rebuke to his vanity2 his country made no show at all4 ,the samples of her industry were not outwardly brilliant4 ,their excellence lay in their inward power1 in their wide usefulness4 ,they were not ornaments and luxuries for the dwellings of the few1 they were inventions that diffuse comforts and blessings among the many1--labor-saving machines and cheap newspapers4 ,by the thoughtful visitor the merit of these was appreciated1 as it was acknowledged in the final awards of the judges4 ,and even in this high department where we are so eminent1 owing to distance and misunderstandings1 we were not adequately represented4 ,but even if we had been1 the ,european would have said1 ,this has a high value and interest2 but still ,i find not here enough to justify the expectations entertained by this people1 and by many in ,europe1 of the future greatness of the ,american ,republic4 ,these things1 significant as they are1 are yet not an alphabet that can be so compounded as to write the richest page of man's history4 ,in this present display ,i find not prefigured that splendid future the ,americans are fond of predicting for themselves4 ,and the ,american1 acknowledging the force of the comment1 would have turned away mortified1 humbled4 ,but he was saved any such humiliation4 ,in the midst of that area1 under that beautiful flag1 day after day1 week after week1 month after month1 from morn till night1 go when he would1 he beheld there a circle ever full1 its vacancies supplied as soon as they were made1 a circle silent with admiration1 hushed by emotion1 gazing at a master-piece of ,american art1 the ,greek ,slave of ,powers4 ,and from that contemplation hundreds of thousands of ,europeans carried away an impression of ,american capacity1 a conviction that truly a great page is to be written by the young republic in the book of history1--a sense of ,american power which they could have gotten from no other source4 ,our ,association1 gentlemen1 owes its origin to the wants of industry4 ,the moving power which has been strongest in bringing so many of us together to found an institution for the encouragement of art in ,rhode ,island1 is the desire hereby more thoroughly to inweave the beautiful into cotton and woolen fabrics1 into calicoes and delaines2 to melt the beautiful into iron and brass1 and copper1 as well as into silver and gold2 so that our manufacturers and artisans may hold their own against the competition of ,england and ,france and ,germany1 whereof in the two latter countries especially1 schools of design have long existed1 and high artists find their account in furnishing the beautiful to manufacturers4 ,a low origin this for such a society1 and the fruits will be without flavor4 ,art will not submit to be so lowered1 will say some travelled dilettante1 who1 with book in hand1 has looked by rote on the wonders of the ,louvre and the ,vatican2 but the ,creator of the universe teaches a different lesson from this observer4 ,not the rare lightning merely1 but the daily sunlight1 too2 not merely the distant star-studded canopy of the earth1 but also our near earth itself1 has ,he made beautiful4 ,he surrounds us with beauty2 ,he envelops us in beauty4 ,beauty is spread out on the familiar grass1 glows in the daily flower1 glistens in the dew1 waves in the commonest leafy branch4 ,all about us1 in infinite variety1 beauty is lavished by ,god in sights and sounds1 and odors4 ,now1 in using the countless and multifarious substances that are put within our reach1 to be by our ingenuity and contrivance wrought into materials for our protection and comfort1 and pleasure1 it becomes us to--it is part of his design that we shall--follow the divine example1 so that in all our handiwork1 as in his1 there shall be beauty1 so much as the nature of each product is susceptible of4 ,that it is the final purpose of ,providence that our whole life1 inward and outward1 shall be beautiful1 and be steeped in beauty1 we have evidence1 in the yearnings of the best natures for the perfect1 in the delight we take in the most resplendent objects of art and nature1 in the ennobling thrill we feel on witnessing a beautiful deed4 ,by culture we can so create and multiply beauty1 that all our surroundings shall be beautiful4 ,can you not imagine a city of the size of this1 or vastly larger1 the structure of whose streets and buildings shall be made under the control of the best architectural ideas1 being of various stones and marbles1 and various in style and color1 so that each and every one shall be either light1 or graceful1 or simple1 or ornate1 or solid1 or grand1 according to its purpose1 and the conception of the builder2 and in the midst and on the borders of the city1 squares1 and parks1 planted with trees and flowers and freshened by streams and fountains4 ,and when you recall the agreeable1 the elevating sensation you have experienced in front of a perfect piece of architecture 7still so rare71 will you not readily concede that where every edifice should be beautiful1 and you never walked or drove out but through streets of palaces and artistic parks1 the effect on the whole population of this ever-present beauty and grandeur1 would be to refine1 to expand1 to elevate4 ,when we look at the architectural improvements made within a generation1 in ,london1 in ,paris1 in ,new ,york1 we may1 without being ,utopians1 hope for this transformation4 ,but the full consummation of such a hope can only be brought about in unison with improvements in all the conditions and relations of life1 and the diffusion of such improvements among the masses4 ,it is to further-such diffusion that this ,association has been founded4 ,our purpose is to meet the growing demand for beauty in all things2 to bring into closer cooperation the artisan and the artist2 to make universally visible and active the harmony1--,i almost might say the identity1--there is between the useful and the beautiful4 ,gentlemen1 ever in the heart of the practical1 in the very core of the useful1 there is enclosed a seed of beauty2 and upon the fructification1 growth1 and expansion of that seed depends1--aye1 absolutely depends1--the development of the practical4 ,but for the expansion of that seed1 we should have neither the plough nor the printing-press1 neither shoes nor the steam engine4 ,to that we owe silver forks as well as the electric telegraph4 ,in no province of work or human endeavor is improvement made1 is improvement possible1 but by the action of that noble faculty through which we are uplifted when standing before a masterpiece of ,raphael4 ,this ceaseless seeking for a better1 this unresting impulse towards the perfect1 has brought the ,english race through a thousand years of gradual upward movement1 from the narrow heptarchy1 with its rude simplicity of life1 up to this wide cultivated confederacy of states with its multiform opulence of life2 and will yet carry us to a condition as much superior to our present as that is to the times of ,alfred4 ,in the works of the ,almighty this principle is so alive that they are radiant with beauty2 and the degree of the radiance of each is often the measure of its usefulness4 ,how beautiful is a field of golden wheat--whereby our bodies live--and the more beautiful the closer it stands and the fuller are its heads4 ,the oak and the pine owe their majestic beauty to that which is the index of their usefulness1 the solid magnitude of their trunks4 ,the proportions which give the horse his highest symmetry of form1 give him his fleetness and endurance and strength4 ,and thus1 too1 with man1--his works1 when best1 sparkle most with this fire of the beautiful4 ,we profit by history in proportion as it registers beautiful sayings and beautiful doings4 ,we profit one another in everyday life in proportion as our acts1 the minor as well as the greater1 are vitalized by this divine essence of beauty4 ,to the speeches of ,webster1 even to the most technical1 this essence gives their completeness and their grandeur of proportion2 while it is this which illuminates with undying splendor the creations of ,allston4 ,thus1 gentlemen1 the aim of our ,association is most noble and useful1 drawing its nobleness from its high usefulness4 ,may it so prosper1 that a generation hence1 thousands and tens of thousands shall look back to this the day of its inauguration with praise and thankfulness4